Drawing on new archival material, original research, and interviews, this book is the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how his personal relationships shaped his life and work.
Though it is principally concerned with Baldwin’s personal life, [Baldwin] is good at showing how the life seeps into the fiction; political events receive less attention ... Boggs’s biography makes a hugely important contribution, because it takes us to the heart of Baldwin’s message—the fear of love—and shows how urgent that problem was for him ... Boggs sometimes strains to detect homoeroticism in Baldwin’s relations with men he was friendly with ... On the whole, though, he sticks to the facts and avoids sensationalism.
Magisterial ... Boggs offers fresh insights throughout his final section ... He serves up a feast of gossip and speculation, which succeeds brilliantly as narrative, less so as morality tale. Boggs targets our nation’s myths and hypocrisy with dead-eyed accuracy, yet keeps aloof from his protagonist’s dalliances with vulnerable young men ... He bathes Baldwin in a halo of light while stopping shy of hagiography ... A fiery, fiercely researched biography worthy of an American genius, an indictment of enduring racism and 'homosocial panic.' Boggs teases out the aura of the divine that suffused Baldwin’s oeuvre ... Boggs’ achievement is that he allows us to make up our own minds.
This superb biography is more than worthy of its larger-than-life subject ... Eloquent ... At once erotic and erudite ...
Having mastered his subject, Boggs movingly presents Baldwin as the avatar of Black queer literary history and breathes new life into the genre with a volume that will enrich scholarship for the LGBTQ+ community.
