On James Baldwin

“Colm Tibn’s personal account of encountering James Baldwin’s work, published in Baldwin’s centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tibn first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Tibn found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar. From On James Baldwin, Baldwin was interested in the hidden and dramatic areas in his own being, and was prepared as a writer to explore difficult truths about his own private life. In his fiction, he had to battle for the right of his protagonists to choose or influence their destinies. He knew about guilt and rage and bitter privacies in a way that few of his White novelist contemporarie