colin_cox's review against another edition
5.0
Nobody Knows My Name is a motley collection of essays that demonstrate Baldwin's range of interests and preoccupations. Paradoxes as a theme cut across many of the essays in Nobody Knows My Name. In the opening essay, "The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American," Baldwin class and social mobility in the United States and Europe. He writes, "though American society is more mobile than Europe's, it is easier to cut across social and occupational lines there than it is here...Where everyone has status, it is also perfectly possible, after all, that no one has. It seems inevitable, in any case, that a man may become uneasy as to just what his status is" (7). The lack of what Baldwin describes as "social paranoia" in Europe creates the conditions, at least for the American writer in Europe, if not all Europeans, to feel "accessible to everyone and open to everything" (8). There are certainly ways of challenging these assertions, but more than anything, Baldwin attempts to explore the degree to which restriction produces actual freedom. Said another way, perhaps it is only through confinement and limitation that we are free.
Baldwin extends this compare and contrast work to art, and in particular, the apparent differences between European art and African art. He writes, "European art attempts to imitate nature. African art is concerned with reaching beyond and beneath nature...The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains" (24).
With that said, the two essays that merge many of the recurrent themes in Nobody Knows My Name, are "A Fly in Buttermilk" and "Faulkner and Desegregation." In "A Fly in Buttermilk," Baldwin visits the American South to write about school integration and segregation in the late 1950s. Baldwin concludes the essay by writing, "For segregation has worked brilliantly in the South, and, in fact, in the nation, to this extent: it has allowed white people, with scarcely any pangs of conscience whatever, to create, in every generation, only the Negro they wished to see" (96). Here, Baldwin gestures toward a compelling idea about race, racism, and segregation. Baldwin suggests that race creates the condition for racism and segregation. Race, therefore, in Baldwin's hands, loses all of its presumed self-evident characteristics. While for most, racism and segregation are appalling, Baldwin argues that racism and segregation are the logical conclusions of race as an idea.
Similarly, in "Faulkner and Desegregation," Baldwin censures William Faulkner for his support of segregation. Baldwin, for example, rejects the idea that Faulkner's support of segregation is hypocrisy. Instead, he argues, "he [Faulkner] is not being hypocritical; he means it" (121). For Baldwin, it is Faulkner's sincerity that is both a problem but also the key to understanding racism in the American South.
Yet, despite Baldwin's firm and unambiguous condemnation of Faulkner, he, at times, sounds a little sympathetic. For example, he argues, "What seems to define the Southerner, in his own mind at any rate, is his relationship to the North, that is to the rest of the Republic, a relationship which can at the very best be described as uneasy. It is apparently very difficult to be at once a Southerner and an American" (122). Baldwin develops this point near the end of page 122 when he writes, "The difficulty, perhaps, is that the Southerner clings to two entirely antithetical doctrines, two legends, two histories" (122). This Southern tradition, then, is "a legend which contains an accusation. And that accusation...is that the North, in winning the war, left the South only one means of asserting its identity and that means was the Negro" (123-124). While Baldwin is under no circumstances sympathetic to racism, segregation, or the "Lost Cause" narrative, he sees the American South as a subtle and conflicted place. More than anything, he rejects oversimplifications. However, Baldwin understands these cries for moderation are ultimately false. He writes, "But the time Faulkner aks for does not exist," and he concludes by suggesting, "The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now" (126).
Suffice it to say, Nobody Knows My Name is an intimate, intelligent, and revealing look at one of the 20th century's most significant black writers.
Baldwin extends this compare and contrast work to art, and in particular, the apparent differences between European art and African art. He writes, "European art attempts to imitate nature. African art is concerned with reaching beyond and beneath nature...The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains" (24).
With that said, the two essays that merge many of the recurrent themes in Nobody Knows My Name, are "A Fly in Buttermilk" and "Faulkner and Desegregation." In "A Fly in Buttermilk," Baldwin visits the American South to write about school integration and segregation in the late 1950s. Baldwin concludes the essay by writing, "For segregation has worked brilliantly in the South, and, in fact, in the nation, to this extent: it has allowed white people, with scarcely any pangs of conscience whatever, to create, in every generation, only the Negro they wished to see" (96). Here, Baldwin gestures toward a compelling idea about race, racism, and segregation. Baldwin suggests that race creates the condition for racism and segregation. Race, therefore, in Baldwin's hands, loses all of its presumed self-evident characteristics. While for most, racism and segregation are appalling, Baldwin argues that racism and segregation are the logical conclusions of race as an idea.
Similarly, in "Faulkner and Desegregation," Baldwin censures William Faulkner for his support of segregation. Baldwin, for example, rejects the idea that Faulkner's support of segregation is hypocrisy. Instead, he argues, "he [Faulkner] is not being hypocritical; he means it" (121). For Baldwin, it is Faulkner's sincerity that is both a problem but also the key to understanding racism in the American South.
Yet, despite Baldwin's firm and unambiguous condemnation of Faulkner, he, at times, sounds a little sympathetic. For example, he argues, "What seems to define the Southerner, in his own mind at any rate, is his relationship to the North, that is to the rest of the Republic, a relationship which can at the very best be described as uneasy. It is apparently very difficult to be at once a Southerner and an American" (122). Baldwin develops this point near the end of page 122 when he writes, "The difficulty, perhaps, is that the Southerner clings to two entirely antithetical doctrines, two legends, two histories" (122). This Southern tradition, then, is "a legend which contains an accusation. And that accusation...is that the North, in winning the war, left the South only one means of asserting its identity and that means was the Negro" (123-124). While Baldwin is under no circumstances sympathetic to racism, segregation, or the "Lost Cause" narrative, he sees the American South as a subtle and conflicted place. More than anything, he rejects oversimplifications. However, Baldwin understands these cries for moderation are ultimately false. He writes, "But the time Faulkner aks for does not exist," and he concludes by suggesting, "The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now" (126).
Suffice it to say, Nobody Knows My Name is an intimate, intelligent, and revealing look at one of the 20th century's most significant black writers.
irishills's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
indydhania's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
danasiler's review against another edition
5.0
25 of 35 on my #AmplifyMelanatedVoices TBR.
“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”
“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.”
“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”
“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.”
dashtaisen's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0