James Baldwin: Why He Stopped Repeating Himself

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]I thought no, I'm a writer. I'm going to I'm going to I'm not going to write Go Tell It on the Mountain again. 73 times.

[00:00:08]I did a play which I knew nobody ever did. The Amen Corner. The Amen Corner, yeah.

[00:00:12]Put it in my trunk for years and years.

[00:00:15]11 years in fact before it was produced.

[00:00:18]Put it in my trunk. Put it in my trunk, yeah.

[00:00:21]One of my finger exercises. Cuz I was walking around in the novel. Right.

[00:00:27]At that moment. And then I did it in Giovanni's Room very much as a finger exercise two and also and also in order to confront something I had to deal with in myself.

[00:00:34]It's one of the dangers of being a black American.

[00:00:40]And and certainly a black American man is there's such a complex of ambiguities to deal with, you know.