“Vulnerability Is A Superpower” with Danté Stewart

Summary

---

The Baldwin 100 – “Vulnerability Is A Superpower”

Guest: Danté Stewart | Host: Cree Myles
Date: August 2, 2024

---

Episode Overview

This episode of The Baldwin 100—a podcast celebrating the centennial of James Baldwin’s birth—features an intimate conversation with Reverend Danté Stewart, author of Shouting in the Fire: An American Epistle. Host Cree Myles and Stewart dive deep into Baldwin’s legacy, the overlap between faith and the Black experience, vulnerability as a creative superpower, and the burdens and possibilities Baldwin’s legacy places on today’s Black writers. Later in the episode, Baldwin scholar Ed Pavlich provides historical context on Baldwin’s complicated relationship with the church and how it shaped both his writing and life.

---

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Discovering Baldwin: Personal and Political Crossroads

Timestamps: [02:36–08:26]

• Stewart describes his first encounter with Baldwin:
  • In 2017, working in a white Southern Baptist church, Stewart was expected to help with “racial reconciliation”—a process he felt was more performative than transformative.
  • He recalls the trauma and invisibility of being a Black person in spaces resistant to real change:

    “To be in the vicinity of a person that so long render you invisible, and them trying to almost metamorphosize themselves into something different, that is a very painful endeavor.”—Danté Stewart [04:12]

  • His Black Southern upbringing instilled survival and respectability, but not a deeper exploration of Blackness itself.
  • The 2016 election and police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were catalytic; as his reality unraveled, he sought language and solace in Baldwin, especially The Fire Next Time.

2. The Power and Pain of Vulnerability

Timestamps: [08:56–17:01]

• Baldwin’s influence on Stewart’s writing:

  • Stewart points to Baldwin’s essays—especially those in Nobody Knows My Name—as a model of “vulnerable human documents.”

  • He reads a poignant Baldwin quote:

    “I rather think now, to tell the truth, that it was merely my youth, my first youth anyway, that was ending. And I hated to see it go. In the context of my life, the end of my youth was signaled by the reluctant realization that I had indeed become a writer.” [Excerpt, Baldwin, read by Stewart; ~10:55]

  • Stewart draws a parallel between the grief of personal change and the necessity of surrendering old selves to become more authentic:

    “It is Baldwin’s realization of the little deaths he dies every day... There is something about the 30s that just represent a sort of vulnerability of life where one begins to encounter the reality that, like, damn, this thing really ends...”
    “Your vulnerability is your superpower.” — Stewart’s friend to him [13:06]

  • Definition of vulnerability as superpower:

    “To see vulnerability as a superpower is to have the ability to go where human beings find it hard to go, to lead them safely through on the other side... whether I’m a parent, writer, minister, or friend...” — Stewart [13:07–14:45]

3. Authenticity and Living Out Baldwin’s Teachings

Timestamps: [17:01–24:26]

• Moving from inspiration to application:

  • Myles asks how Stewart manages to “internalize and apply” Baldwin rather than just quote him.
  • Stewart:

    “Cause I got no choice... I’ve seen a whole lot of death at 32... Grew up with longing for love and affirmation.”

    • Describes life as a “rat race” for the validation lacking in childhood—mirroring Baldwin’s own familial experiences.
    • Shares a story with Jason Reynolds about the etymology of “enthusiasm”—to be filled with God—as parallel to being filled up by meaningful language.

• Cautions against commodifying Baldwin:

  • Both acknowledge how Baldwin has become an icon—a kind of “marketable radical”—often used more as a weapon than as a lens for healing or wholeness.

    “How can we honor and love a person if we only reduce their lives to being a weapon in our war?” — Stewart [22:21]

  • Urges a more nuanced, writerly appreciation for the labor, craft, and vulnerability behind Baldwin’s words.

4. Baldwin, Faith, and the Black Church

Timestamps: [24:29–35:51]

• On not walking away from the church despite its harm:

  • For Stewart, staying is not an intellectual exercise:

    “I only wrestle with things because I care deeply about what we do here.” [26:54]

  • References a lesson from Baldwin:

    “Children have not been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” — Baldwin, quoted by Stewart [26:54]

• Redefining love through Baldwin’s lens:

  • Stewart’s definition of love:

    “To love someone is to always remain open to the questions of our existence together... It refuses to make another person battle for their humanity and visibility according to a criteria that was not intended for them.” [~28:02]

  • Challenges empty political love:

    “You can’t possibly love America and not do something about Black maternal health care. You can’t love this nation without doing something about people who are in prison unfairly... You can’t possibly love somebody else and deny them the ability to live the fullest life possible that God allowed for them.” [30:09–31:21]

• On surrender and liberation in love:

  • Discusses how love requires relinquishing control, and how self-acceptance must be a starting point (not endpoint):

    “Sometimes giving up things give you access to things you could not have had had you not given that thing up. ...Self-acceptance should be the first act, not the final act of our lives.” [34:41–35:51]

5. Public Perception of Baldwin and Black Writers

Timestamps: [35:51–39:25]

• Stewart wishes critics would stop measuring today’s Black writers against Baldwin, and allow more freedom in subject matter:

  “Sometimes the Black writer wants to write about birds and trees and stars and grasshoppers... but the world forces us to have to write about hard things, to be visible.” [36:01–37:00]

• He expresses frustration at feeling pigeonholed into trauma:

  “It makes me so sad sometimes because there’s so much more in that book than just, like, the scenes where Alton dies or the scenes where Philando dies ... we’ve been so socialized to think that we gotta always write about hard things in order to be visible. And sadly, that’s what the world demands of us.” [38:37–39:21]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It is impossible to read The Fire Next Time and remain the same, especially if you’re in a Christian space—and most especially if that Christian space is a white Christian space.” — Danté Stewart [07:45]
• “Your vulnerability is your superpower.” — Danté Stewart’s friend [13:06]
• “To love someone is always to remain open to the question of our existence together. … Real love refuses to make another person battle for their humanity.” — Danté Stewart [28:02]
• “I hate that the world forces us to have to write about hard things to be visible.” — Danté Stewart [37:00]
• “It is a sad thing to turn art or language into a weapon when it was meant to be a world.” — Danté Stewart [24:00]

---

Historical/Contextual Segment: Ed Pavlich on Baldwin & Faith

Timestamps: [41:01–48:03]

• Go Tell It on the Mountain excerpt illustrates how the church was more real for Baldwin’s alter ego than any apartment.
• The Black church as more than religious institution: family, music, culture, survival.
• Baldwin’s contentious relationship with his stepfather (conservative Christian) contrasted with his mother's boundless, loving faith.
• Pavlich suggests the “touch” readers feel from Baldwin’s prose is rooted in the physical, communal worship and traditions of his early religious upbringing:

  “The thing that people experience when they read James Baldwin on a page is a sense of touch... I think his words themselves are really lost pieces of that body of faith, that sense of mutual entanglement and redemptive presence.” — Ed Pavlich [46:52]

---

Takeaways

• Vulnerability and love are both hard-fought and hard-won, requiring continual self-interrogation and the willingness to grieve losses and release unnecessary battles.
• Baldwin’s lived complexity—his faith, pain, and ever-questioning love—should be honored as a whole, not reduced to soundbites or slogans.
• Black writers’ freedom should not be constrained by market demands for trauma, nor by constant comparison to Baldwin, necessary as his legacy is.
• Baldwin’s relevance is in his insistence on difficult honesty, relentless care, communal belonging, and language that not only wounds but heals.

---

Further Listening/Reading

• Find Baldwin’s centenary editions at JamesBaldwinBooks.com
• Check out Danté Stewart’s book: Shouting in the Fire: An American Epistle
• Follow host Cree Myles’ Always Black community on Instagram for more Black literature content

---

Transcript

[A]

Hi, y'. All. Welcome to the Baldwin 100 podcast, brought to you by Penguin Random House and the James Baldwin family. I'm your host, CRE Miles. I'm a writer, influencer, organizer and curator of the award winning Always Black, an online community dedicated to discussing all things black literature. In this podcast, we're extending that mission by celebrating some of the iconic black authors and artists whose work continues to inspire us to look at the world world with fresh eyes and work together to build a stronger, more equitable and inclusive society for all. August 2, 2024 marks the Centennial of the birth of the extraordinary black writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin. To celebrate this significant event in these installments of the podcast, we're going behind the scenes with authors, celebrities and personal friends of Baldwin to give you the inside scoop on who he was as a person as well as an author, speaker, activist and cult icon, and why he and his works are more relevant than ever today. So let's dive in. I'm so excited to welcome today's guest, Reverend Dante Stewart. Dante is the author of Shouting in the Fire, An American Epistle, available from Convergent Books. He's also an award winning writer whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, espn, cnn, msnbc, and more. A sought after voice on matters of faith, heartbreak, justice and the power of telling stories that matter. He has spoken about these issues to NPR on several occasions and has made it his mission to deliver the lessons of love, faith and humanity that James Baldwin held dear. As Dante wrote in his op ed for cnn, for Baldwin, love was the key that unlocks the door to a more healing and liberating conception of God and experience of faith. We'll explore the impact of Baldwin's faith, the power of the black church and more in this episode. This will be followed by a segment with Baldwin historian Ed Pavlich on the impact of James Baldwin's religious upbringing in a Pentecostal household and the premises of his seminal work, the Fire. Next time, and nobody knows my name,

[B]

I would like to welcome to the podcast today Dante Stewart.

[C]

What's up, Cree?

[B]

When did you first discover Baldwin? What was your entry point?

[D]

Wow, Cree, I knew you was gonna ask me this question and I tried to come up with an amazing story and I just don't got one.

[B]

Well, thank you for not lying,

[C]

but if I tell you the truth, it may be amazing in and of itself.

[B]

Always.

[D]

So here I am in 2017 inside of the white church. I'm preaching, teaching, leading at a church that is A part of the southern Baptist convention. I am one of the young people who are called upon, as many others, because we were black and visible and apt and vibrant. We were called upon to help the church become more racially diverse or to try and do this work of racial reconciliation, which, in their mind, was just simply gathering a bunch of people in the room to worship together without actually thinking deeply about how those people entered the room and how they. They exited. Because before we ever become to worship, we're human beings coming from the world, and before we exit worship, we're human beings entering back into the world, hopefully different persons than when we came. And so I. I and others were called upon to help them try to do that work. And lo and behold, as time began to unfold itself and. And their actual lives begin to bear witness to who they are, it became increasingly clear people had proclamations of wanting to do better, but they didn't really have a program to actually make sure that that actual change actually happens and in some sense, protect us from what it means for white people to change with black people around them, which is a very, very, extremely, extremely, extremely traumatizing reality. Yeah, I don't care who they are. I don't care if they're good, bad, indifferent, or whatever. To be in the vicinity of a person that's so long render you invisible, and them trying to almost metamorphosize themselves into something different, that is a very painful endeavor. I'll be a human endeavor. Because everybody, whether you're a parent, whether you're a son, daughter, you know, whether you're partnered or single, have friends all of us have to deal with at some point where the people around us change. We just hope that when they do change, we don't become a recipient of how hard that change years and become hurt in the process.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Because sometimes the deepest hurts come from the people who we are closest to, who change in ways that are oftentimes at odds with where we are and who we are in this present moment. Yeah, sometimes we got to see that through. Sometimes we don't. I. E. Baldwin and all his people, he end up maybe falling out with or things like that. So here I am in this white church, and it became clear that, like, okay, they really don't want to change the way that they want to change. Problem is, here I am, I'm a young black dude, and I'm not, at this point, I haven't read anything about a black person. I was raised in the black rural south. I'm a baby of you know, two human beings who grew up in, respectively, in the 60s and the 70s and came of age in that moment of the respectability politics. Oh, 100%. 100%. Who came up in that moment, who, at one hand, they had a sort of like, quiet radicalism.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

In which, like, their radicalism was about salvaging what they still held on to. And the closest thing they held on to was their house, their land, their children, their jobs. And so they didn't necessarily invest deeply in shifting our mind as much as they're trying to save our bodies. And so I'm a black. I'm baby of the black rule South, Go to the Clemson University, get socialized in white, white space, become, come into this white Christian space as a young black dude who knows he's black, but actually doesn't understand what that blackness actually means. And so two things, two major things were happening at one time. Donald Trump's presidency and Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being murdered while I'm there. And things quickly begin to unravel. And as they begin to unravel, I begin to unravel in and of myself. And when that happens, every human being, when they are going through deep, deep change, they need language to understand their experience and help them not feel crazy along the process.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

And that's where Baldwin enters my life. The short story is that, you know, I came to Baldwin by way of Martin Luther King's where do we go from here? When he quoted the fire next time. Actually, the first part of the fire next time, Baldwin's letter to his nephew and King's book shaped me tremendously. But Baldwin's book gave me language. Because Baldwin's writing a letter is necessarily a vulnerable document, a vulnerable human document. And because Baldwin's vulnerability met my vulnerability, I think, you know, that's why I kind of resonated with Baldwin in that way to where I put where do we go from here down when I picked up the fire next time? And you know, what's wild is it's impossible. I feel like when we had this conversation in 2021, when my book came out, I might have repeated myself that like, it's impossible to redefine next time and remain the same, especially if you're in a Christian space, and most especially if that Christian space is a white Christian space. So that's how I came to Baldwin, and I've been with him ever since.

[B]

I mean, that story was beautiful. And I. I distinctly remember a lot of the things that you mentioned that happened in your book and your book was so vulnerable. Like how open you were about the way that you just kowtowed to white fragility and like unlearning that and everything. Did Baldwin inform your ability to go that deep in any type of way?

[D]

I think. I think so. And if I'm honest, sometimes, Creed, it scares me a little bit. What's wild is I've been thinking a lot about this as I've been working on my second book, particularly because, like, I talk to a lot of writers and in those conversations, somehow the conversation at some point goes to, how did we survive this thing?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And I'm not talking about the country. I'm talking about how do we survive the demand of what we have to do as writers and where we have to go. So I found myself going back to Baldwin's, Baldwin's essays. And like, if you just simply look at this thing like it is a well worn copy of Baldwin's essays, it's not torn because, you know, I was sad or ripped it up, my baby got to it and I had to put it back together. But in some sense I put this jacket back together this way as a reminder that, like, there are things in life that are going to bear our names and break us. And yet at some point something is going to happen to put us back together. And we're at some point going to bear witness to the breaking and the becoming. And so I went back to Baldwin's joint and it was nobody knows my name. So I'm gonna read the quote and then I'm gonna talk about this quote real quick. Cause it's just so important to this idea of vulnerability and particularly this season for me as a writer and a human. He says these essays were written over the last six years in various places in many states of mind. These years seemed, on the whole, rather sad and aimless to me. My life in Europe was ending not because I had decided that it should, but because it became clearer and clearer as I dealt with the streets and the climate and the temperame fled to Spain and Scandinavia. That something had ended for me. I rather think now, to tell the

[C]

truth, that it was merely my youth,

[D]

my first youth anyway, that was ending. And I hated to see it go in the context of my life. The end of my youth was signaled by the reluctant realization that I had indeed become a writer. So far and so good. And now I will have to go the distance. If there's anything about vulnerability and Baldwin, it is Baldwin's realization of the little deaths he die every day. This comes out in 1961. And by 1961, I want to say he's like, 37, if I'm not mistaken. And there's something about the 30s that just represent a sort of vulnerability of life where one begins to encounter the reality that, like, damn, this thing really ends,

[B]

Dante.

[C]

And this thing really does end. And I ain't young no more.

[B]

No.

[C]

And because I'm not young anymore, everything

[D]

matters so much more. And the facts is that, like, because

[C]

they matter so much more, my sadness

[D]

and depression oftentimes increase because I'm hyper aware of the fact that there will be things in the process that will be lost. When I think about Baldwin saying this,

[C]

he says, I have become a writer. So far, so good. Like, people look around, they like, yo, bro, you wrote an amazing a book. Like, books. By 1961, he was there. Like, by 1961, he was there.

[D]

And yet he had this intimate awareness of what's happening on the inside. And I think, for me, I am incredibly aware of what's happening on the inside of my life.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And my friend told me. She said, dante, your vulnerability. And it sounds very cliche, but is very real. She says, dante, your vulnerability is your superpower.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

And I think to think about vulnerability as superpower is simply this. It simply means this. To utilize, to see vulnerability as a superpower is to have the ability to go where human beings find it hard to go, to lead them safely through on the other side. That's vulnerability. Whether I'm a parent, as a parent, I go places where people find it hard to go, so that I can lead them safely through on the other side. As a writer, as a minister, as a human, as a friend, I go to places people find it hard to go. We find it hard every day to wake up and be disciplined. We find it hard every day to not lose our minds over everything that we have to go through. We find it very hard to go back to a journal that was written four or five years ago and to see where we were at. We find it hard to take time to stop and actually, like, map out where you want to go as a writer. When it comes to craft. We find it hard to read books on craft and writing. We find it hard to wrestle with another person dying across the world. We find it hard to wrestle with the situation that we find ourselves in politically here. We find it hard to just get up every single day in the morning and realize that there is something beautiful that can happen in this day, at this very moment in our lives where we are Right now, we find it hard to do those things.

[C]

And it is the vulnerable people that

[D]

would allow us the courage to at least take the step to do what's necessary to become the people that we know ourselves to become.

[C]

Not everybody in this life going to

[D]

be this, quote unquote, visible great human

[C]

being, but everybody in this world, every

[D]

single person, can be the best that they can be to themselves.

[C]

And it is maybe reading something that Baldwin wrote during this moment, maybe it's reading something that Baldwin wrote in this moment, that it just simply give us the simple affirmation that I can go

[D]

to the place I find it hard to go today.

[C]

I can grieve the thing I hate to see go. There have been relationships that people have had over these last few years that

[D]

have died through the pandemic.

[C]

There have been friendships that have died. There have been opportunities that have died.

[D]

There have been people who have died.

[C]

There have been things that have died. But whatever that thing is, the thing that we hate to see go, the thing that we hate to see die within us, it is okay to grieve that thing and to name it as such and relate to it differently. Because we have been. We have gotten word for somebody else that they were able to grieve and they survived it somehow. Some way after 19, I feel like preaching my, my.

[B]

We knew he was gonna.

[C]

After 1961, after he finished grieving the thing that died in himself. Somehow Baldwin found a way to pick himself up and finish this book. Because he said he was going to do it.

[D]

So every single day, I don't know

[C]

how he did it, but every single

[D]

day from 1955-61, after seeing all that he had saw in the world and

[C]

all he saw in himself, Baldwin found

[D]

a way to get up on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, on

[C]

Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday, to think

[D]

about, as the poet Louise Gluck says, moving things forward. And so if I can be vulnerable in that way, then maybe somebody else can access their vulnerability and realize that superpower in them every single day.

[B]

You know, I was really excited to talk to you because I feel like I've been able to watch you from scratch. You know, I saw you even before shouting in the fire came out. And you know when you first talk to someone. Cause this is the energy you always bring. So you first talk to someone and they talk like this, or they say that things have impacted them like this. But you know the saying, I can't hear what you say. Cause I see what you do. But being able to have Watched you for the past two, three years. I know that those are deeply aligned. Like, you take this life really seriously and you take what you do really seriously and you really want to be as good as possible at it. And as you said, like you said, how can somebody read these lines by Baldwin and not move differently? But Dante, people do. They do just read lines or just see Baldwin as this, like, iconoclast that isn't really a human. So how are you able to internalize the things that you see and, like, apply to your life versus just passively experiencing them?

[D]

Cause I got no choice. You know, it's one thing to live and have to endure what we have to endure and live the way we live. And like, it's quite another thing to live and not really have gone through nothing. I done seen a whole lot of death at 32 years old. I done seen a whole lot of life at 32 years of age. I'm an extremely high functioning individual. Like you said. You named that like you want to be great. I really do. Because from a young kid, I feel like there's so much that has been snatched and robbed from me from a youngin. And I never thought in some sense because of all the destruction around me, not simply because of race, but also because people just lost control of life living in the black world south, that I never imagined that I would, you know, live to be a thing or grow up in such a way to. To be a thing. And because you grew up in such a small place, you want such a big life, and oftentimes your imagination outpaces your life condition. And that in some sense, in turn makes you, like, depressed in serious ways because you're so used to, like, having such a small life. What did that line that Barbara wrote and go tell it on the mountain, that he was longing for love.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Like he was the young brother was longing for love.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And you long for that affirmation. You long for that love. And it's almost as if, like your whole life is a rat race to get the affirmation you felt like you didn't get when you were younger. And so when something begins to work, you hold onto it and latch onto it with a sort of sense of desperation because it makes you feel strong and powerful in ways that, like, you felt disempowered in the past.

[C]

And I don't know if my knowledge

[D]

of Baldwin is tied to that, but I think it might be.

[B]

I mean, everything that you just described is, like, on par with the childhood he experienced 100%.

[D]

And so you reaching for these things.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And when you find them, it really is like, spiritual.

[D]

Jason told me one day, he told me, he said, dante, Jason Reynolds. Jason Reynolds. He asked me, Dante. He said, Dante, what you think the word enthusiasm means? He said. I told him, I was like, man, bro, I think it means, like, passion, right? Like, and things and vigor, vitality. He said, nah, go look up the etymology of the word enthusiasm. So I pull up Google, look up the word enthusiasm. It's enthusias to be filled with God. So the get language in which, like, you almost feel with some divine capacity to. To give yourself something that you have in the past. You can't read a thing and not somehow use it, because the life that you presently live depends on your ability to put into practice what you know, but more so what you felt.

[C]

And for me, like, I don't know

[D]

why people read Baldwin and just use them partly because I think Baldwin is very marketable in that regard. Like, I think every radical human being becomes marketable when we turn their words into a weapon. You know, someone say, okay, radicality isn't, like, marketable. Like. No, no, it is, it is. You know, it's.

[B]

And the shade of marriage shirts, The Baldwin shirts. Yeah, 100% Biggie.

[C]

Yeah, 100%.

[D]

Like, it's a market.

[C]

And to name that is okay. Like, to name that situation is okay, you know, but, like, how can we

[D]

honor and love a person if we only reduce their lives to being a weapon in our war?

[B]

You really are a preacher. You really are. Oh, gosh.

[C]

I'm just saying many people use Baldwin. A lot of people don't have admiration

[D]

for what he became. When we develop a sort of, like, language really is powerful and sacred, then we'll do a better job of, like, honoring what people had to go through just to write a word. Like, when you begin to understand how hard a thing is to write, you begin to honor it. And I think that's why writers honor Baldwin's words a little bit more than others. Because we understand that, like, the fire next time didn't just become the fire next time. The fire next time probably went through an insane amount of drafts just to get to the point where he can even, like, string together a thought. I mean, go telling on the mountain,

[C]

you know, like all these books, the

[D]

amen corner, going to meet the man.

[C]

All these Baldwin books, he said this, like this. They were written in various places and in various states of mind. So there was no constancy.

[D]

There was always movement.

[C]

And if you understand that if you

[D]

understand like how language becomes what it

[C]

is, then then we would do a

[D]

better job of honoring people for who they are and what they're trying to write. And for me, I feel like the older I get, I just don't want to turn. I don't want to rob language of the world that it is. It is a sad thing to turn art or language into a weapon when it was meant to be a world. Does world have violence in it? Of course. But is world only weapon in war? No. And if I only view it that way, as many people view Baldwin, then I will miss out on so much of the goodness that is found beneath the surface.

[B]

I have a follow up question, but I really want to hit a specific

[A]

question because you're the only minister that

[B]

we're talking to and Baldwin's relationship with church, you know, is extensive. In 2022, you wrote an op ed

[A]

for CNN called James Baldwin on Love, Faith and Easter. And you wrote, like Baldwin, I too was raised Pentecostal. I too am a minister.

[B]

I too, like so many today, have

[A]

been baptized in both the beauty and the brutality of the church. And the question that crawls around in my heart and mind as I hear Baldwin's words is, what does love demand of us as we live in a country so full of Bibles, but so empty of love?

[B]

My question always is, why grapple with it when you could just walk away?

[D]

It's just who I am. Cree. Like, there's no philosophical answer to this. Yeah, I'm just a human being who has learned how to care. Like, I know what it's like to be alone. I know what it's like to be unaffirmed. I know what it's like to feel like you don't exist in the right body. I know what it's like to have things happen to you, taken away from you and not feel like you're good enough. And all of those things taught me how to care deeply about the one life we get to live. I've been wrestling with this lately because I have truly, through therapy, through my own journaling, sometimes I wonder why I care. You know, sometimes. Sometimes I regret caring so much. You know, sometimes. Sometimes I wish I just had a attitude like, none of this matters, it's all done anyway. But something that my gut just tells me to run. I just can't help but care. If a person is on the playground and as a kid and they weren't being played with intuitively, I just go play with that kid. And my son and my daughter are the same way my wife took my kids to the playground the other day, yesterday actually. And she tells me, she says, man, they even these kids that was, you know, playing by themselves and Ace and neighbor went over to them and started playing with them and things like that. And it made me feel so good. Because a child only becomes what the adults in their lives allow them to become. Baldwin says children have not been good at listening to their elders, but they've never failed to imitate them.

[B]

Yep.

[D]

And if a child is unconcerned or don't care, maybe, possibly that child was raised by people who showed them such lack of care, such lack of attention. And I know this not necessarily answering the question, but it's definitely tied up in the question. Like, I only wrestle with things because I care deeply about what we do here. I care deeply about, like, the world

[B]

before when we were talking and you were talking about if you act like what love actually is. And I loved that because, I mean, I think the overarching theme of Baldwin's work is love. Right. Love, liberation, truth. And I do think we have. We have a bad definition in society of what love is. And I think we are afraid of discomfort. And real love requires some of that. And so I'm wondering how. How has Baldwin helped you form your definition of love and stand in that?

[D]

Oh, 100%. So this is the own. This is the best way I've learned how to describe love. To love someone is to always remain open to the questions of our existence together. So whether Baldwin is writing about the Algerians, or whether Baldwin is writing by Buford Delany, or whether Baldwin is writing Sweet Lorraine, or whether Baldwin is talking to teachers or whether Baldwin is writing to his nephew, or whether Baldwin is writing about Bigger. In Bigger Thomas, which is actually one of my favorite quotes ever in Notes of a Native Son, he writes about Bigger Thomas in that excellent essay, Everybody's protest novel, he says. He says, for Bigger's tragedy is not that he is cold or black or hungry, not even that he is American black, but that he has accepted a theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility for his being subhuman and feels constrained, therefore, to battle for his humanity to those brutal to, according to the brutal criteria, bequeath him at his birth, but our humanity is our burden, our life. We need not battle for it. We need only to do what is infinitely more difficult, that is accepted. So to love someone else is always remain open to the question of our existence together. It refuses to make another person battle for their humanity. And Visibility according to a criteria that was not intended for them. It allowed just to simply think about this grants them the possibility of a God or a theology that doesn't deny them life. The problem in this moment is that we say we love people, but we're denying them the fullest life possible.

[C]

How can you love a nation and not allow the people of the nation

[D]

to live the fullest life possible?

[C]

You can't possibly love America and not

[D]

allow a student who rightfully deserved to give her speech as a valedictorian and you cancel her speech.

[C]

You can't possibly love America and not do something about black maternal health care. You can't love America and not do something about the failures of veteran health care and mental health care. You can't love America. You can't love this nation without doing something about people who are in prison and incarcerated unfairly. You can't do something. You can't love America if you don't do something about the ways in which our politics has become ungovernable and people are losing hope. Not in America, but yes, America, but losing hope in themselves and the power that exists within us to actually change the country that we live in. You can't possibly, possibly love somebody else and you deny them the ability to

[D]

live the fullest life possible that God allowed for them. But also, it's one thing to deny yourself. It's quite another thing to have to fight for your existence. To love someone is to liberate them from the battle of life. When I met my wife, I was in college playing football. I was very young dude, very just, like, very ambitious and yet very, like, sensitive and very. I didn't really know myself. I was trying to find myself, trying to find who I was. And yet, like, I truly believe that, like, I deserved a big life. And in those 10 years since meeting 12 years since meeting my wife, 10 years since being married, there have been so many battles that I've had to fight either in myself or with her or with life. And one of the dope, amazing things about our friendship and our relationship and our marriage is that my wife's love for me has been loosening my grip from the battle, loosening my grip from having to battle so much for so many things. See, love is a powerful thing. But love is powerful only insofar as we're okay with relinquishing things.

[C]

Things.

[D]

You can't possibly know the full expression of love if you're not willing to give up something. And I'm not saying that, like, I'm being Very careful. I'm trying to be very careful about my words. Because in religion, oftentimes we say the more you give up, the more God loves you.

[B]

Right, Right.

[D]

So the more you deny yourself, the more you know you're accepted by God or accepted by the space. But I'm thinking about Baldwin, like, the battle, having to battle for things. Like, no, sometimes giving up things give you access to things you could not have had had you not given that thing up. I want to know one day what it's like to give up comparison.

[B]

Yeah, I know.

[D]

I want to know what it's like to give up perfection.

[C]

I want to know what it's like

[D]

not to have to battle, to feel like my life matters.

[C]

I want to know what it's like

[D]

to not have to battle, to feel like I got to stay relevant or have to do this or have to write this next op ed and do this.

[C]

Like, bro, I just signed a book deal. And, like, I haven't even, like, fully processed it because I'm so in a mold for battling for a thing that I'm trying to accomplish, and I don't know what it is.

[D]

I can tell you I'm going to

[C]

therapy for it, but I'm. And I'm trying to get rid of the battle, but, like, I'm not there yet. But I'm thankful for the people in

[D]

my life that helped me realize that, like, when you relinquish something, you open up yourself the possibility that something better can take its place. So to love, to return to Baldwin, I think that definition wrapped up in his criticism of the way Bigger was written, is about love, is to give up the battle, is to do things that, like, make us become fully alive and to, like, create the condition in which self acceptance is the norm. And the first act, not the final self acceptance, should be the first act, not the final act of our lives. The final act should be satisfaction. And I think that is something that haunted Baldwin is because he never could quite get those acts of lives right. And he died without having done it, though he tried his best.

[B]

I. I just have one more question for you. If you could change one way about how the public perceives Baldwin, what would you change?

[D]

The public, especially publications, would stop judging us against Baldwin, allow writers to find themselves and not have to be good writers. Today, I feel like there's so much pressure for the black writer. The pressure on the black writer is also about the problems of the black writer, especially from the world, because sometimes the black writer wants to write about birds and trees and Stars and grasshoppers and flowers and cutting grass and drinking coffee and running, stretching. I don't know, like, going on a plane, eating a good meal. I don't like that. Like, that the world forces us to have to write about hard things, to be visible.

[B]

God, Dante.

[D]

Like, I hate it. Like, I hate Instagram. Like, I hate writing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Some sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, public writing.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Many of the only things that, like, like, are visible. Somebody gotta die.

[C]

Somebody gotta be heard.

[D]

Somebody got to be in pain.

[C]

In my office, there is a nebula in front of me. A painting of a net, a picture of a nebula taken from a telescope. I love. Of Carl Sagan.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

I want to write about Carl Sagan.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

There's pictures and photographs in here. I want to write about that. Like, there's. There's every. There's paintings in here. There's sports in here. There's. There's everything. There's metals, there's this, there's that. I want to write about that. We want to write about that.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Stop making us have to write about trauma to be visible. And the wild part is this. Sometimes I regret writing Shouting in Fire.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I believe it because, like, it's a great book. It's a good book. It's a stellar book. It's a monumental book. There ain't no other book written like it. Like, in the last 10 years. Like, I'm just saying this from a standpoint of writing. Like, nobody has lived a life in which they were black in white church space and have to leave it and wrestle with Trump and all. Nope. Like, we talked about it, but in written form, that book ain't been written. Like, let's just be real.

[D]

Like, it makes me so sad sometimes because it's like, dang, bro. Like, there's so much more in that book than just, like, the scenes where Alton dies or the scenes where Philando dies or the scenes where I wrestle with white people. It's like, we've been so socialized to think that we gotta always write about hard things in order to be visible. And sadly, that's what the world demands of us, and we can't get out of it. And because I wish that I could say that, like, the black writer can just stand in their own square and write whatever. And I'm saying, like, let me be clear. We can do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

We do do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

But it's about, like, we gotta eat, too. Most of the writing in Baldwin's essays are political about American identity, and I hate that for him, because life is so much more than American political identity. And what. What could he have been had the world gave him a shot to be more than it demanded him to be? The only reason why this book is political is because it had to be. Why doesn't the world give us more opportunities to be more than simply that?

[B]

Thank you so much for taking time to do this and for your commitment to vulnerability and honesty and excellence. Literally.

[A]

What can I say?

[D]

Thank you, K. And thank you so much to, you know, your deep, deep care. Like, I don't know what. What happened in your life that made you this way, but I'm glad life worked out the way it did.

[A]

The Baldwin 100. Dante Stewart and I covered a ton of ground in our conversation. From the similarities between James Baldwin's and Dante's upbringings in the Pentecostal Church to Baldwin's famous works the Fire Next Time and Nobody Knows My Name. These are meaty topics. So to cap off this episode, we asked Baldwin historian Ed Pavelich to shed more light on Baldwin's complicated relationship with the church and these seminal essays he wrote about race relations and the critical role of writers in our society.

[E]

You know, there's a line in Go Tell on the Mountain very early on in the novel Go Tell on the Mountain, which is Baldwin's first novel, that his character, John Grimes, who is autobiographically based for sure, that in John Grimes young life, the church they went to was far more real to him than any of the apartments that his family had occupied during the early years of his life. And that's a really interesting thing to consider and a thing not uncommon in many, many ways for many, many people. There's been much written over decades and maybe centuries about the central role of the church in black communities, and not just being a church, but being a community center and a center for family and a center for food distribution and a center for music, a center for culture. All kinds of things take place in the church that are really, really crucial. And certainly that was true in Baldwin's young life in a very, very powerful way. To the extent where, when he imagined his life in the character of John Grimes, to whatever degree we can draw that connection, there are real degrees to which we can draw that connection. He imagined that in ways the church building had a reality far beyond whatever rented apartments were, were his experience up to that point. And it's true that Baldwin had a very. During his father's life, he had a very contentious relationship with his father and often a very bitter relationship to his father. And some of that had to do with a very conservative version of what Christian faith entailed and what living a life as a Christian and a black Christian and a black Christian man entailed. And this was something that James Baldwin, the young boy, the adolescent, and the young man, resisted profoundly in his father's influence. But it's also true that Baldwin was the beloved son of a woman that he did consider a true Christian and who considered herself a true Christian, and who made love and a kind of boundless love the center of her existence. And that was a love that radiated through her family, through generations in her family, and far beyond that. And that was a love that resonated through James Baldwin as her son, likewise in radiuses, far beyond his mother, obviously globally at this point. And so sometimes we lose track of that because we fixate on the conflict with his father, which are very real, especially during his life, that he processed, as sons do, often upon the death of their father. They then begin to reassess all these things. And Baldwin, in wonderful ways, had that in common with sons all over the world. But we do lose track of the fact that he had a very, very different relationship to his mother in these terms and also friends. Baldwin was taken by a friend of his named Arthur Moore to the church of a very famous Harlem evangelist named Mother Horne, where he had this kind of religious conversion take place in his body, in his life, in his spirit, when he was 14. And it's very important that this took place not in his family church. This took place in the family church of his friend's family, and in this historically important church of this figure, fantastically, this figure of his friend, which comes up in the fire next time. We play this scene out in the fire next time. But, of course, the names aren't exactly given in precise ways to protect the privacy of the people involved at the time. But that was Mother Horne's church, and that was Arthur Moore and his family that took Baldwin to have that religious conversion outside the auspices of his father's influence, which was crucial, but very much in tune with the power and purpose of his mother's faith, which is also crucial for me, the core of it is that in those churches, in his early life and before his conversion, you know, to be an active pastor in those venues, it's clear to me that Baldwin became sensitized, as millions of people are sensitized, to the experience of being part of a body of faith, the experience of having one's sense of self intertwined in an essential way with the bodies and spirits of other people. Around. And there's a culture, there's a rhythm of performance, footstep and hand clapping and gestures and tones of voice that accumulate into choruses and of course, a whole corpus of traditional songs that accompany that sense of mutual entangled and redemptive belonging. And that is something that never left James Baldwin, ever, for five minutes, no matter where he was. I think this is just what I think the thing that people experience when they read James Baldwin on a page, any page, is a particular thing, and it's not alone in Baldwin's work, but is peculiar to Baldwin's work, is that people feel a sense of touch in those words. People feel physically touched by the language he's using and how he's using it, which is strange because it's just printed on a page like anybody else, but it's not. And where does that difference come from? And my idea is that in writing, Baldwin is trying to recover that sense of mutual contact with people that he knew is familiar to himself from those early years of his life. And like many of us lost later on in some ways, because we mature, our brains develop, our bodies develop, and we lose a sense of wholeness and fullness in our childhood. And it makes our memories of those times tantalizing as they are, and makes us subject to all kinds of stupidities of nostalgia. Baldwin as a writer at the core of it all, no matter what he's doing, no matter what the subject is, no matter what the genre is, I think his words themselves are really lost pieces of that body of faith, of that sense of mutual entanglement and redemptive presence. And that makes a great deal of sense. It clarifies something about the relationship of music to his words, the relationship of musical performance to Baldwin's work as a writer on the page, which is always there, no matter what the subject. That's what's really going on there.

[B]

Thanks for listening to the Baldwin 100 podcast.

[A]

If you like what you heard, we'd be grateful if you'd subscribe, rate and review on your favorite podcast platform and get the deluxe centenary editions of Baldwin's works at jamesbaldwinbooks.com penguinrandomhouse.com, or wherever books are sold.

[B]

This podcast is a production of Penguin Random House Media, hosted by Me CRE Miles, produced by Stephanie Bowen and Shalia

[A]

Harris, and edited by Clayton Gumpert. Trevor Baldwin is executive producer.

[B]

For more information, follow Always Black, our

[A]

awesome community dedicated to black literature on Instagram and for other great podcasts featuring your favorite authors, check out the hit show Family Secrets with Danny Shapiro as well as this is Taste. Marlon and Jake read Dead People, Criminal Types books, Connect us and others in the show notes.

[B]

Thanks again for tuning in and see you next time.