James Baldwin

An item at American Writers Museum

James Baldwin was brilliant and brave. He wrote honestly about homosexuality in several novels, including Giovanni's Room (1956). In the 1960s, he returned to the U.S. from Europe (where he had moved to escape American racism) to take part in the Civil Rights Movement. His searing essays on race in The Fire Next Time (1963) are as relevant today as when they were written.

When Baldwin died, author Toni Morrison wrote a heartrending eulogy in The New York Times, thanking him for "three gifts": his language, which had "lean, targeted power" and "upright elegance"; his courage "to appropriate an alien, hostile, all-white geography"; and his tenderness, a "vulnerability, that asked everything, expected everything."

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum