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