For the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, an international array of literature fans are coming together in Paris at a festival that will honour the life and work of the iconic American author and civil rights activist.
The James
Baldwin Centennial Festival, scheduled for Sept. 9 to 13, aims to be a “celebration”
that will take place at multiple venues in the French capital, according to
Tara Phillips, executive director of La Maison Baldwin, the organizers.
In the eight
years since it was formed, however, La Maison Baldwin hasn’t always had smooth
sailing, as some of its activities ran counter to the vision of Baldwin’s
family on how to honour his uncompromising work and long-lasting influence. But
now, with new direction, the organization has the family’s support, including
for the festival, Phillips says.
Baldwin - the author
of stirring books such as The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the
Mountain and Giovanni’s Room - remains one of the most revered (and
quoted) writers today, decades after his death in 1987. Born on Aug. 2, 1924,
he would have turned 100 this year, and the festival might have been held in
his birth month were it not for the recent Paris Olympic Games.
According to
Phillips, the event will comprise panel discussions, writing workshops, an art
exhibition, student participation and an open-mic segment, among the various
features.
In the
following edited interview, conducted in person in Paris, Phillips discusses
the overall goals and the far-reaching power of Baldwin’s works and words.
SWAN: Let’s
start with the centenary and why this festival, why it’s taking place in
France.
And
so that’s why we thought it was important to do a centennial event, and we also
wanted to be aligned with the family who had already been thinking about the
centennial in early 2023. We were trying to build a relationship with them, and
it just made sense that we were all thinking about this as a way to
collectively honour his legacy.
(Note:
Baldwin’s family held a centennial celebration at the Lincoln Center in New
York on Aug. 7, at which Phillips spoke.)
SWAN: How
will the family be involved in the Paris festival?
TP: Well, on the first day, there’s a
welcoming reception, and I will invite Trevor Baldwin, James Baldwin’s nephew,
to say a few words. But then on the following day, we’ll have the very first
panel, called “La Maison Baldwin”, and it’s about the idea of home, both
literally and also as in the Black literary tradition. Trevor will
participate on that panel as somebody who knew his Uncle Jimmy, and can give
some insight into the idea of home for James Baldwin. He was a Harlem man, but
he lived all over the world, and his idea of home is pretty complex. And what
I’m discovering as I get to know more and more members of the family is that a
lot of them have this wanderlust and live in different parts of the world. So,
that will be a way to engage a familial voice on that issue, particularly for
Black people.
SWAN: Is the festival open to the general public?
TP: There’s a festival fee, but anybody
can attend. James Baldwin’s followers and admirers are so diverse: you have the
Black community, the literary community, the activist community, the LGBTQ+
community, you have students, academics, artists. The idea was to create an
experience that would appeal to all those types of people, but always with the
idea of centering James Baldwin.
TP: We’ll have a welcome reception, and
that’s going to be sponsored by the US Embassy. It will be just a moment to
come together and celebrate the fact that we’re in Paris and to kick things
off. Then we will start the next day with a keynote speaker (author Robert
Jones, Jr.) and multiple panel discussions where we’ll be thinking about
Baldwin and reflecting on the theme of the festival: Baldwin and Black Legacy, Truth,
Liberation, Activism.
SWAN: How
did the theme come about?
TP: It came about as the centennial
committee brainstormed words that came to mind when we thought about Baldwin
and his work and his impact. You know, he spoke truth, also in his writing. And
for many people, it liberated them. He gave us the language to liberate us from
conceptions of ourselves, or our perceptions of the world, and perceptions of
our humanity. And that liberation motivates activism for many of us. That’s
how we came to that theme.
SWAN: And
continuing with the various elements of the festival, there will be an art
exhibition?
TP: Yes, we’ll have an exhibition that will be running during the week. It's called Frontline Prophet. Those works are by Sabrina Nelson, curated by Ashara Ekundayo and Omo Misha. It’s this brilliant collection of art sketches that Sabrina initially did in 2016 at the James Baldwin conference (held at the American University of Paris), and it’s returning, coming full circle.
SWAN: In
addition, there’s a big move to engage students, youth…
TP: Yes, there will be a student activism
workshop. We want to engage young people with Baldwin’s work and tap into their
own sense of activism. You know, these are such interesting times to be young,
right? There have always been things happening in history, in our world, but
because of social media, because we have access to see everything all the time,
I think young people are engaged in a a very different way than they probably
would have been without these mediums. And they’ve been the ones to kind of reinvigorate
Baldwin’s language and works in a lot of ways.
So, we wanted
to give them a space where they could explore the idea of activism through
leadership, through creativity and through community. For those three days,
they will have their own space together to look at some of Baldwin’s works, to
engage with each other and talk with each other. We’re partnering with the
Collectif Baldwin (a local organization) on that. I actually think this is the
most important part of the festival.
SWAN: Where
will the students be coming from?
TP: We basically would like to see
students from everywhere who have the time or interest to attend. But we also
think it’s very important that there’s a presence of French students as well
because what I’m discovering, particularly as a I make more connections here in
Paris, is that there is so much to be learned from Baldwin in the context of France
and their relations around racism and cultural identity. So, to be able to
engage French students in this conversation would be to discuss their own
activism. After the workshop, they will also do a presentation - on what they
learned and on how they can take Baldwin into the future.
SWAN: Let’s
talk about your background coming into this. What is your personal relationship
with Baldwin’s work?
Then he would
pop up in my psyche over the years, and now he kind of haunts me because I’m
constantly doing this work. And the connection for me, with respect to taking
on this work, is that I have moved to Paris as a Black American (in 2018), and
I started writing then, and I could just really connect to his sense of freedom
coming here. I mean, being in the United States as a Black American and then
also as the mother of a Black son, there’s just a weight that you carry, and
people who don’t have our experience, they don’t understand what it’s like, and
they don’t understand how persistent it is: how you can try to live a life of
joy, and of peace, and of intellectual curiosity and all of these things as a Black
American, but there’s always a moment when you’re kind of smacked back to the
reality of, like, our positioning in society and our history. His words
became so important to me, especially after George Floyd’s murder. Baldwin just
understood. He had the language.
Another
connection for me, and I’ve written about this, is that my father’s name is
James and my father was born in Harlem and grew up there, like Baldwin. Turns
out that they both went to the same high school but 20 years apart. I think
about my dad’s connection to Harlem, his Harlem pride, and how he left because
things got so bad in the Sixties and Seventies. He moved my whole family out
because he wanted something better for us. And in some ways, I feel that that
was James Baldwin’s understanding: another black Jimmy from Harlem saying: “I’ve
got to get out of here if I’m going to be true to my own humanity and live the
life that I need to live.”
SWAN: In
light of all this, what are your hopes for the festival overall?
Let it just be
a party of writers and artists and creatives and scholars, just experiencing one
another and Paris, and why this place was important for him and his own experience
and development as a human. And let’s just celebrate young people, and their
potential and their possibilities, which I think Baldwin really cared about. He
had a word for everybody, you know. And it’s funny because Duke University
Press has donated 300 copies of Little Man, Little Man, which Baldwin
wrote for his nephew, and I love that this is a children’s book… this is what
it’s really about - passing on the word for another generation. - AM /
SWAN
Photos (top to bottom): A 2016 sketch of James Baldwin by artist Sabrina Nelson; Tara Phillips in Paris (photo by AM/SWAN); the cover of an early edition of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (Dell Publishing); Deesha Philyaw (photo courtesy of the festival); the cover of The Evidence of Things Not Seen (Macmillan Publishers); the cover of Little Man, Little Man (Duke University Press).
For more
info: https://www.lamaisonbaldwin.org/centennial