Full Bio: The Early Years of James Baldwin

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It with Alison Stewart

Episode: Full Bio: The Early Years of James Baldwin
Air Date: September 15, 2025
Guest: Nicholas Boggs, author of Baldwin: A Love Story
Main Topic: The formative years of James Baldwin—his family, influences, first ambitions, early loves, and the creative roots explored in Nicholas Boggs's new biography.

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Overview

In this episode of "All Of It," host Alison Stewart interviews Nicholas Boggs, whose new book, Baldwin: A Love Story, offers the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades. The discussion covers Baldwin's early years, family life, key relationships, and the intersections of race, sexuality, and artistry that shaped him into a literary and civil rights icon. The episode explores seldom-seen archival materials, Baldwin's mentoring relationships, and the struggles he faced as an artist and Black gay man in mid-20th-century America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis and Sources of the Biography

Timestamps: 02:43–04:34

• Nicholas Boggs describes how new archives and personal interviews shaped this book, including the Schomburg Center's acquisition of major Baldwin collections in 2017 and exclusive access to hours of David Leeming’s interviews with Baldwin.
• Interviews with Baldwin's friends and associates shaped the narrative, focusing on both personal and romantic relationships.

Quote:
“It was only around the time that the archives became available in 2017 that I began to understand that there was a whole biography here told through his great loves.”
— Nicholas Boggs (03:52)

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2. “Love is the only reality, the only terror and the only hope.”

Timestamps: 04:34–06:01

• Boggs explains that the heart of Baldwin’s life and work was love—romantic, familial, political, and self-love.
• Baldwin’s writing, such as The Fire Next Time, evokes love as the solution to societal divides: “He called on Black and white Americans to turn to each other like lovers.”

Quote:
“His entire life was about love, not just his relationships, but his writing was all about love.”
— Nicholas Boggs (04:45)

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3. Baldwin’s Family: Bonds and Strains

Timestamps: 06:01–08:45

• Baldwin’s close, complex relationship with his mother and stepfather is detailed. His mother was hardworking and loving; his stepfather, strict and critical.
• Baldwin only later learned his father was a stepfather. His stepfather’s harsh criticism of his appearance and manner deeply affected him.
• Sibling bonds: Of his eight siblings, David was closest—a confidant and lifelong supporter.

Quote:
“He realized that, in fact, no, my mother is beautiful and maybe I am too.”
— Nicholas Boggs (07:20)

Quote:
“He dedicated some literary works to his brother. You know, he came the first time he came back over from the States. He was kind of nervous that maybe his brother wouldn’t be accepting of his sexuality. But as his brother later said to somebody, ‘honey, I already knew. I always knew.’”
— Nicholas Boggs (08:24)

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4. Preacher, Outsider, and Self-Love

Timestamps: 08:45–11:05

• Baldwin became a teen preacher, seeking validation, community, and a way to work with words—a rebellion against his father and refuge from sexual confusion.
• Endured bullying for being “bookish” and effeminate, and for his perceived ugliness.
• Turner from struggle to art: Buford Delaney, a Black artist, became his “spiritual father, painted Baldwin, and helped him see himself as beautiful.

Quote:
“Baldwin’s journey to self-love is sort of part of the whole subject of this book, right? And he calls love a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up.”
— Nicholas Boggs (10:14)

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5. Key Mentors: O. Miller (“Bill”) and Countee Cullen

Timestamps: 11:05–14:10

• Elementary school teacher “Bill” Miller recognized Baldwin’s intellect, took him to plays, and became a lifelong influence.
• Bill’s presence helped Baldwin “escape the trap of color” and resist hating white people—despite the racism his family endured from others.

Quote:
“It was Bill Miller who helped me escape what he called the trap of color. And he said, it’s also because of her that I never managed to hate white people. Although he added, I did wish to murder more than a few.”
— Nicholas Boggs (12:50)

• Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen was his junior high English teacher, providing a model for artistic Black manhood different from Baldwin’s father.

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6. Early Writer: School Days, DeWitt Clinton, and The Magpie

Timestamps: 14:10–15:09

• Baldwin showed literary promise early, writing school songs and poems and contributing to the DeWitt Clinton High School literary magazine alongside future luminaries.

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7. Buford Delaney: Mentor, Muse, Spiritual Father

Timestamps: 15:09–18:24

• Delaney, a prominent Black painter, welcomed Baldwin into the Greenwich Village bohemia, exposing him to jazz, blues, and a new way of seeing art and self.
• Their relationship was a blend of paternal, spiritual, and—subtextually—erotic connection. Delaney set a model for what being an artist could mean for a Black man and remained in Baldwin’s life even during years in Paris and France.

Quote:
“Baldwin felt a profound responsibility towards Buford Delaney because he really felt that Buford had saved his life.”
— Nicholas Boggs (18:33)

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8. Love, Sex, and Performance: Identity as Role

Timestamps: 19:25–21:29

• Baldwin, as a young man, was confused and clandestine about his sexuality, searching for words and models.
• He observed how identity—racial and sexual—was often “performance,” and that these constraints could be bent or subverted.

Quote:
“He understood that that’s what I mean by a role, that it’s a performance...if these are imposed by dominant society, we also have the power to create our own roles and to undermine these meanings.”
— Nicholas Boggs (21:06)

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9. Friends and Allies: Marlon Brando

Timestamps: 21:29–22:23

• Baldwin met Brando at the New School. Their friendship began with mutual recognition and included support during civil rights activism.

Quote:
“Baldwin called him a beautiful cat. And he said that Brando made him feel like he might not be ugly.”
— Nicholas Boggs (21:42)

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10. Hard Scrabble Beginnings: Money and Survival

Timestamps: 22:23–24:08

• Baldwin was chronically broke, making his way by charm, patronage, and occasional financial help from friends like Marlon Brando.
• Even when he later had money, he gave it away freely.

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11. Meeting Richard Wright: Mentorship and Complications

Timestamps: 24:08–25:30

• Richard Wright, already a literary star, mentored Baldwin as he worked on his first novel. Initially thrilling, the relationship grew fraught as Baldwin’s criticisms and aesthetic differences emerged.

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12. The Rosenwald Fellowship and Escape to France

Timestamps: 25:30–26:46

• Baldwin received the Rosenwald Fellowship, mostly gave the money to his mother, and left for France with just $40.
• The move was fueled by family obligation, survivor’s guilt, and fear for his life as a Black, queer man—after friends were lost to suicide and violence.

Quote:
“He kind of didn’t kind of. He felt that he was next, that he was going to die if he stayed there. So there was this deep conflict between wanting to stay for his family, but he knew that he had to get away.”
— Nicholas Boggs (25:59)

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Memorable Quotes, Moments & Speaker Attributions

• “He lived his entire life...about love. Not just his relationships, but his writing was all about love.” — Nicholas Boggs (04:45)
• “If he could come to love himself, maybe there was a way that Americans could come together to love each other.” — Nicholas Boggs (10:14)
• “I did wish to murder more than a few [white people].” (Baldwin, via Boggs, on growing up in Harlem and his ambivalent feelings) (12:50)
• “He used to sing this negro spiritual, ‘Lord, open the Unusual Door.’ And Baldwin really felt that’s what Buford had done for him.” — Nicholas Boggs (18:33)
• “He saw these sort of married businessmen ... and then he would see them at the bars or in the bathrooms — he had this insight ... that it’s a performance.” — Nicholas Boggs (21:06)
• “He kind of didn’t kind of. He felt that he was next, that he was going to die if he stayed there.” — Nicholas Boggs (25:59)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:43 — Research, sources, and biographies
• 04:34 — The centrality of love in Baldwin’s life/work
• 06:01 — Family relationships, mother and stepfather
• 08:45 — Becoming a preacher, self-image, bullying
• 11:05 — The influence of “Bill” Miller and Countee Cullen
• 14:31 — DeWitt Clinton High School and early writing
• 15:09 — Meeting Buford Delaney and lessons of art & life
• 19:25 — Race, sex, and the performance of identity
• 21:29 — Friendship with Marlon Brando
• 22:23 — Financial survival and support
• 24:08 — Richard Wright’s mentorship
• 25:30 — Rosenwald Fellowship, survivor’s guilt, and flight to France

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Tone and Style

The conversation is warm, thoughtful, and deeply empathetic, with candid personal storytelling from Nicholas Boggs and contextual, respectful prompts from Alison Stewart. Boggs weaves anecdotes and insights with sensitivity, honoring the complexity and intersectionality of Baldwin’s life.

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Final Note

For those new to James Baldwin or curious about what shaped one of America’s most incisive literary and cultural critics, this podcast episode offers a rich, nuanced portrait—not just of the writer, but of the lived experience, adversity, and love that fueled his art and activism. This is only the beginning—tomorrow’s episode promises more on Baldwin’s greatest love and artistic triumphs.

Transcript

[WNYC Announcer]

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Full Bio is our book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Today we will be talking with Nicholas Boggs, the author of A Love Story. Boggs spent more than a decade working on this 700 page book, and it is the first major biography of the literary giant in 30 years. James Baldwin was the author of the novels Go Tell it on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, Another country, if Beale Street Could Talk, as well as essays like Notes of a Native Son and Plays like blues for Mr. Charlie. He was a thinker, a communicator, a civil rights leader and a lover. And this book shows how intertwined all those attributes were in his writing. Baldwin A Love Story is just over 700 pages long. So we'll get into Bogg's work in a few important moments. You'll have to read the book to get the rest. Young James Baldwin began his life as a preacher's son in Harlem, and he became a boy preacher himself. Here's Baldwin talking to fresh air in 1986.

[James Baldwin (archive recording)]

Well, it was almost inevitable, you know, being raised that way. And after all, not doubting anything my father said, not doubting the gospel, not doubting the church, you know, and at the time of puberty, when everybody goes through a storm, you know, the storm of self discovery, the storm of self contempt, the storm of terror of who is this self which is suddenly, suddenly evolving, you know, suddenly is distinguishing itself from other selves and all of these things and the sexual question, of course, you know, all of these things sort of coalesce into some kind of hurricane in a way, you know. And in that hurricane, what did I do? I reached out for the only thing I could, which I knew to cling to, and that was the Holy Ghost.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's get into Baldwin A Love Story with Nicholas Boggs, our choice for full bio. All right. So this is the first big biography of James Baldwin since 1994's David Leeming's book. What resources did you have that biographers before didn't?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, the Schomburg acquired a collection of Baldwin's Matiere Hill's massive one in 2017, and I got the book contract in 2018. But David Leeming, I'm glad you brought him up because he. He himself was actually an incredible resource. He was Baldwin's friend, his personal secretary. He did hours of interviews with him that are also available at the Beinecke that had never been transcribed, that I spent most of the pandemic transcribing. So being able to interview him extensively was also kind of new. I was the first person to do that. So archives at speaking with people and then people that I. Several people that I tracked down who.

[Alison Stewart]

Knew Baldwin personally over the course of writing this book, how did it change from what your original intention was going to be?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, that depends when you say this book, when I started working on it, since I got the book contract, it's pretty similar. I just added one figure. There were three figures of these major loves of his life. Buford Delany, Lucien Habersberger and Jorah Kazak. I added Engin Jazzar, these. This Turkish actor who was very important to him. But I didn't actually realize I was writing a biography. I was researching this really for more than 20 years, trying to bring Little Man, Little Man, Baldwin's children's book back into print, trying to write about his last great love affair with the collaborator of that book. And it was only around the time that the archives became available in 2017 that I began to understand that there was a whole biography here told through his great loves.

[Alison Stewart]

You start the book with the James Baldwin quote, unquote, Love is the only reality, the only terror and the only hope. How does your book support that belief?

[Nicholas Boggs]

That is sort of a mantra that he lived by, even though that was just. Actually, that's at the Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library. It's just like something he wrote to a friend on the back of a postcard or something. So this is not a well known Baldwin quote, but I came upon it and I thought, gosh, this really explains the. So much of his. So much of his life, I mean, he lived his entire life was about love, not just his relationships, but his writing was all about love. Think about the fire next time when he said only love will throw open the gates. Right. He called on black and white Americans to turn to each other like lovers. Right. He was being metaphorical here, but to sort of try to understand each other the way that lovers must. So love was everywhere in his sort of political writing. And of course, all of his novels are love stories. Right. Giovanni's Room is a great love story. Love triangle. Another country is a kind of tortured love story. Go Tell it in the Mountain is a subtextually kind of queer love story. His later novels are all about black queer love and the black family. So love is everywhere in his writing and everywhere in his life. And it really felt like a natural fit to take a look at the gaps in his love life and the people he dedicated his novels to, the people he collaborated with, to really understand Baldwin in all of his multiplicity.

[Alison Stewart]

We're talking to Nicholas Boggs. The name of the book is A Love Story. It's our choice. For full bio, I want to do a little biographical information about James Baldwin so that we can have these conversations. James Arthur Jones was born August 2, 1924 in Harlem Hospital to Emma Burtis Jones, a single mother, and she later married David Baldwin. What was James Baldwin's relationship with his mother like? What was his relationship with his stepfather?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Baldwin's relationship with his mother was extremely close and a beautiful one. And I had the great pleasure of drawing on a rare letter that he wrote to her from Corsica in this book that we can maybe talk about later. But growing up, she really, you know, she was working very hard as a housekeeper and all kinds of other jobs as a domestic. And his father was working a very difficult job on a soda factory in Long Island. That's his stepfather, but he called him his father and didn't know he was a stepfather until much later. So the relationship with the mother was close, but also Baldwin was the oldest of nine children and he was really kind of her right hand man. He was responsible for raising these children. So it was complicated in that way because he was never fully a child almost. He had to grow up very quickly. His relationship with his stepfather was far more complicated. His stepfather, you know, I open the book with this moment when James Baldwin goes and sees he's taken there by a schoolteacher to see Bette Davis on screen. And he sees her eyes and. And he thinks, hold on a second. Those are like my mother's eyes. Those are like my eyes. But my father's been telling me that she's ugly and that I'm the ugliest boy in the world. And he realized that, in fact, no, my mother is beautiful and maybe I am too. So, you know, his father would call him frog eyes. So that was a difficult relationship, to be sure, that he wrote about to great effect in one of his major essays, Notes of a Native Son.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

And you said he was the eldest of nine siblings.

[Nicholas Boggs]

That's Correct.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

And it seems that David is the sibling that is mentioned the most in your book. Why is that?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, Baldwin was close with all of his siblings, but David is the one who. I guess I just used the term right hand man. But David became Baldwin's right hand man throughout his life. He really was like his best friend, his protector. He lived with him in the south of France later in his life, but he also accompanied him on really important civil rights events and meetings with rfk. So Baldwin trusted him to the end and they had just a gorgeous relationship. He dedicated some literary works to his brother. You know, he came the first time he came back over from the States. He was kind of nervous that maybe his brother wouldn't be accepting of his sexuality. But as his brother later said to somebody, honey, I already knew. I always knew.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

As you said, his relationship with his father. Stepfather was complicated. His father was a deeply religious man. And it was very interesting that as a young man, James Baldwin decided to become a kid preacher. First of all, why did he take on this role of a preacher and did he believe it?

[Nicholas Boggs]

He took on the role for a complex set of reasons. The first of them being that he sort of, I think in a way, this was the only way that he could kind of be an artist. He saw himself as a writer, but that wasn't really. You weren't supposed to read books in his house. So this was a way to kind of work with language, work with words in a way that was kind of acceptable within his household. It also gave him a chance to kind of one up his father, which he in fact succeeded in doing pretty quickly. But the other pull of this was that he was afraid of his own sexuality as he was coming to realize it. And this gave him a community that was important, but it also gave him a chance to kind of further lie further the lie to himself.

[Alison Stewart]

And you mentioned earlier that he was just told that he was an ugly. An ugly child, an ugly boy. Was it his stepfather who did that?

[Nicholas Boggs]

His stepfather said that. But also kids at school would call him sissy and make fun of him. He was small, he was undersized, he was somewhat effeminate, and he was deeply bookish, obviously.

[Alison Stewart]

How did that affect his development?

[Nicholas Boggs]

I think it affected everything. I mean, he. Baldwin's journey to self love is sort of part of the whole subject of this book, right? And he calls love a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up. And he's talking about his own journey to self love, which the painter Buford Delany down in Greenwich Village, became his spiritual father and painted portraits of him that allowed him to see him as a beautiful young man. So he overcame it. But the kind of interesting thing to me is how he took this struggle with self love and. And he sort of transposed it into his writing about America. So he used it as a sort of springboard to say, okay, this self love is risky and difficult and so is the love between Americans. With this sort of tortured history of race in this country, if he could come to love himself, maybe there was a way that Americans could come together to love each other.

[Alison Stewart]

I love the story about a teacher.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

Who took an interest in him.

[Alison Stewart]

A 24 year old named Oriel Orilla Miller. Is that I'm saying that correctly?

[Nicholas Boggs]

That's right. Although he called her Bill.

[WNYC Announcer]

Bill.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, we'll call her Bill. She was a teacher that he had at PS24 in Harlem.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

What did she see in a young James Baldwin?

[Nicholas Boggs]

It's a really beautiful story and thank you for asking that, because while the book focuses on these four great loves with men, he had so many important relationships with women.

[Alison Stewart]

With women.

[Nicholas Boggs]

True. Yes. Very formative. And she was after his mother. She was maybe the first. So she was on a sort of a fellowship at Teachers College and she was teaching. She came to work with students on drama and she just noticed that they were both reading A Tale of Two Cities at the same time. I mean, he was like 9 years old, 10 years old, and he had all of these fascinating things to say about it. She felt like she was. She was just absolutely blown away. Now there was a wonderful black woman, principal Gertrude Ayers there, who also realized how smart Baldwin was. But this was of course, an underfunded, understaffed school. So right away she sort of whisked her off to Bill Miller and he became her assistant with plays and stuff like that. She ended up coming to the Baldwin family household and asking for being granted eventually permission to take him out to see plays and movies. He went to see Macbeth with an all Haitian cast. I mean, this was really huge for him to see this on stage and see his people represented and to understand that he could do this himself someday.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

And the family wasn't necessarily welcoming of her initially. What was so challenging about Ms. Miller?

[Nicholas Boggs]

I think it's less Ms. Miller than the milieu they were working in. You have to remember how hard and working these parents were and how impoverished they were and how the only time they really saw white people were bill collectors, welfare workers, people who were not necessarily treating them fairly. Right. Trying to kick them out of their homes. So they were rightly skeptical of white people. But Bill was different, as Baldwin said. He said, it was Bill Miller who helped me escape what he called the trap of color. And he said, it's also because of her that I never managed to hate white people. Although he added, I did wish to murder more than a few.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

My guest is Nicholas Boggs. We're talking about his book A Love Story. It's our choice for full bio. When he was a young man, he met Countee Cullen, the poet. How did they meet?

[Nicholas Boggs]

He was his student in junior high school. I mean, this is the thing about Baldwin. For all the challenges he had, he also had these remarkable experiences of meeting people along the way, starting with Bill Miller, but then Countee Cullen. I mean, this huge figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He'd had a good Guggenheim. He lived in Paris, and Baldwin imitated his poetry. Now, Colin was also. And while they didn't talk about that, there's no doubt that there must have been some kind of recognition that, oh, here's a model of black manhood that's different from what his father was presenting to him as a mandate.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

He was a bright boy. James Baldwin loved the library during his time at DeWitt Clinton. When did he first show signs of becoming a writer?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, he showed signs of becoming a writer sort of before. I mean, in junior high school. It was already clear. He wrote the school song for the junior high school.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

I didn't know that.

[Nicholas Boggs]

That's funny. Yeah, he was already. But it was true that when he got there and he met people like Richard Avedon, were his classmates, Sol Stein, other folks who became important publishers, he suddenly was like, oh, here are some peers for me who are really interested in writing. He joined the magpie, and there's wonderful poems and stories that I wrote that are you can find at the Schomburg and a little bit of the Beinecke, and I believe somebody's trying to put a collection of them together now, which would be wonderful. So this is where he, I think, really found his early voice. And that's also around the time that he started working on very early versions of what would become Go Tell it on the Mountain.

[Alison Stewart]

All right. Your book has four different parts to it. We talked about the prologue, sort of the biographical information. Let's get to part one. It's about his relationship with Buford Delany, the artist. First of all, how did he meet Buford Delany?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, in fact, it was through DeWitt Clinton School. His friend Emile Capuya knew of this Eccentric sort of famous black painter named Beaufort Delany, who lived in the Village. And Baldwin was working in a sweatshop on Canal street, not far from where his studio was, we should point out.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, he didn't go to college.

[Nicholas Boggs]

No, no. This was actually while he was still in high school at the sweatshop. And he didn't go to college. He graduated late from high school later on. But he definitely went to the school of life and ended up schooling other people.

[Alison Stewart]

So he met Buford Delaney. He decides to go down to the Village. What else was in the Village that was interesting to him?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, I think at that point he was 16, and I think he kind of felt like a stranger in the Village. He wasn't spending that much time there until Buford took him under his wing, became his kind of spiritual father, introduced him to jazz and blues, which he wasn't allowed to listen to in his home. It was God forsaken. He also taught him how to see the world as an artist. There's a famous story of walking down Broadway, so in the Village, and Buford says, look. And he points down at the gutter, and Baldwin doesn't see anything. And he says, look again. And Baldwin looks again, and he sees these distortions of buildings radiant in the water. And this was a lesson in seeing, certainly. But when Baldwin eventually moved down to Greenwich Village a few years later, he experienced the kind of bohemian lifestyle. Jack Garawack and all those folks who were there. But he also experienced a new kind of racism that he hadn't experienced in the same way in Harlem. And he also experienced kind of being a target for that reason and also because of his sexuality. So this idea that Harlem was dangerous and. And Greenwich Village was liberated, he was disabused of that notion pretty quickly.

[Alison Stewart]

Delany's work can be seen in museums. An exhibit recently closed here in New York. It was gorgeous down on Green Street. There are pictures of Baldwin featured in it. And they very much positioned their relationship as a mentor, mentee, or even father like. Would you agree with that?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Yes. Baldwin called him his spiritual father, but it was a very complicated relationship, as I try to explore in the book. Baldwin was 16, and Buford was a very reticent, kind of prudish man, actually. But I think he kind of, you know, this is a different time we lived in. He kind of fell in love with Baldwin. But Baldwin, late in his life, in one of those amazing interviews that David Leeming did, he said, you know, that Buford never pushed any kind of romantic situation that he Accepted this kind of paternal role that he assigned him to, but that there was this kind of eroticism. And this often happened to Baldwin. There would be an eroticism sort of subtextually in a relationship early on, and then they would either become lovers or they would become friends or brotherly or some other kind of lifelong iteration. In the case of Buford, Buford became, as I said, his spiritual father. And he followed him to France. And Baldwin took care of him through the end of his life.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

Yeah, Buford had a very difficult life. He dealt with mental health issues. And it always seemed that Baldwin was there to help him.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Yes, Baldwin felt a profound responsibility towards Buford Delaney because he really felt that Buford had saved his life. He had provided him. He used to sing this negro spiritual, Lord, open the Unusual Door. And Baldwin really felt that that's what had happened in the village. He had showed him another way of living as an artist. He said this was the first time he realized that a black man could be an artist. Was meeting Buford.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

Did they ever have disagreements?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Oh, yes, because there was this sort of underlying romantic interest. Buford would become quite envious when Baldwin was involved with other men, like Lucien, Although he became very close with Lucien Habersberger. But no, he. And then as Baldwin became famous, I think Buford had feelings of, you know, I mean, really, he just wanted more time with Baldwin. Baldwin was all over the place. So it was very hard to keep up with him. But they had no. It was a compliment, you know, it was a family relationship. And in the end, so it was a complicated one.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

I want to read something that you wrote in the book.

[Alison Stewart]

You write.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

Sexual roles, much like racial ones, were all a performance. And this dawning understanding of the connections between race and sex would fuel many of the insights of his mature writing in both fiction and nonfiction. His being James Baldwin. So in this period when he's late teens, early 20s, what was James Baldwin feeling about his sexual identity and was he interested in writing about it?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, great question. He was confused. I mean, he didn't have the language for it exactly. He knew he was, as he put it, a bastard. That's why he thought he was an outsider. And, you know, strange child, as he was called, he hadn't quite made the connection with these stirrings of desire that he had. But it was while he was in the village that he started to say as he didn't later in his life, he would say to friends when he met them, I'm a homosexual. Even though later he would kind of reject these labels. But he was experimenting with different ways of understanding himself. But the quote that you read is part of why he rejected these labels is that he saw these sort of married businessmen, right, with kids who would act one way in one that setting. And then he would see them at the bars or in the bathrooms, or they'd be trying to sleep with them. And maybe he slept with more than one one of them, he said. So he had this insight into sort of some of these were like straight, white heterosexual men. He understood that that's what I mean by a role, that it's a performance, right? And of course, all these roles are really a performance. He understood that he was kind of some white women really interested in him in the Village because they wanted to take him home to their parents to kind of rebel and humiliate them. And he saw that he was being asked to play a role. But this was useful to understand that these were roles, right? That in fact, if these are imposed by dominant society, we also have the power to create our own roles and to undermine these meanings that are attached to racial and sexual categories.

[Alison Stewart]

While we're in the Village, he meets a young actor, Marlon Brando, at the New School. And Brando will come in and out of his life. What was the attraction between the two of them?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, they met at a urinal, so. But that doesn't mean anything necessarily. But they met in a urinal. They were. I think Brando was at the New School. And Baldwin called him a beautiful cat. And he said that Brando made him feel like he might not be ugly. I mean, he said that. He said. He also said he'd never met anyone like Brando who just did not care about race or would not abide by racism.

[James Baldwin (archive recording)]

So.

[Nicholas Boggs]

So he was sort of shocked by Brando wasn't original. And they would joke with each other about how they were both going to become famous writers and actors and sort of joking. But of course, it ultimately happened. Their bond was deep, in part because they became fierce allies during the civil rights movement.

[Alison Stewart]

We'll talk about that a little bit later. My guest is Nicholas Boggs. The name of the book is A Love Story. It is our choice for full bio, I have to say, and I knew this sort of intellectually, but I didn't know it practically. James Baldwin was always broke. It was amazing the amount of things he had to do to try to make money, whether it was to find his rent in Paris or even to find his way around the city. What were some of the ways that Baldwin early on made it work? For himself financially, or maybe it didn't.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Charm.

[Alison Stewart]

Charm.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Endless charm. He was so charming. I think Richard Howard said. The poet Richard Howard said that he could talk his face away in a few minutes, which is not very nice thing to say. But what he meant by that is he could just charm the pants off of anybody. And it's true. But that doesn't mean that he didn't suffer. I mean, when he worked at that sweatshop, then he worked laying track, and when he got to Paris, he. I don't know. You know, I don't know what he did in Paris to make money, though. That's a good question. There he kind of found a patron named Frank Price who gave him some money, and he scrounged around. And so he did borrow a bunch of money from Marlon Brando as well during that time, because Brando had started to hit it big. So, you know. But then later, when he made money, he also gave it away very freely. He just. Money was not the thing that he. That mattered the most to him. I mean, he definitely wanted to be able to survive. But he was an artist. He really was. That was his calling. And he would do whatever he had to do to get to get the time to write.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

At one point, he was feeling sort of extremely low. He was having trouble getting jobs because he didn't have a college degree, couldn't get published in black newspapers. And then he's introduced to author Richard Wright.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

What did it mean to him to.

[Alison Stewart]

Be introduced to Richard Wright?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, I feel like this is my mantra. It was complicated, or it became complicated, but not at that moment. At that moment, he was absolutely thrilled. It was a friend in common. He was working on what he was calling in my father's house. That became an early version of Go Tell on the Mountain. And he took the train out to Brooklyn, and he went to Richard. He writes about this in one of his essays. He went. He went to meet Richard, whose wife was in the back with the baby. And it's a really funny story because Baldwin hadn't written much, and Wright asked him about the novel. He told him about it because they'd been drinking bourbon, and he pretended he had written, like, much more than he had. So then he had to go home the next week and write it quickly because Wright very generously put him in touch with the publisher for a grant. The publisher eventually turned it down, and that was very disappointing. But it was a first moment of Baldwin seeing, oh, you know, here's a black male writer. The most important black male writer in the world, you know. Well, yet again, another example of, you know, this kind of incredible coincidence and serendipity of Baldwin meeting these people.

[Interviewer/Co-host]

Both Baldwin and Buford Delany applied for a Rosenwald Fellowship. Only Baldwin got it. And this stirred up all kinds of feelings for him. What did he have to consider if he took this money and then he took this money and he used it to go to France?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, he took this money and he used it. Actually, he gave it to his mother. He gave most of it to his mother because he was profoundly, he was beset with great guilt about. He was kind of the bread earner and he had these younger siblings. But he also sensed his best friend, Eugene Worth, had jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death. Baldwin was sort of in love with him. He was seeing other friends beaten up. He'd been harassed. He kind of didn't kind of. He felt that he was next, that he was going to die if he stayed there. So there was this deep conflict between wanting to stay for his family, but he knew that he had to get away. And in a sense it wasn't. It could be anywhere. It could have been England. And it's good that it was France, but so he actually, I mean, this is sort of almost mythological and hard to imagine, but I, as he says in interviews, he gave almost all the money to his mother and he only had $40 in his pocket after he bought the plane ticket when he flew over to France in 1948.

[Alison Stewart]

That was Nicholas Boggs, the author of A Love Story. Tomorrow on Full Bio, we'll hear about the person who was the love of Baldwin's life.

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