James Baldwin emerged in the 1960s as one of America's most gifted writers and one of black America's most articulate spokesmen. Although he is primarily a novelist, Baldwin has also published essays, plays, and short stories. Critics generally agree that Baldwin is at his best as an essayist, shows flashes of brilliance as a fiction writer, and is least impressive as a playwright. Baldwin's career actually began in 1946 with the publication of a book review in the Nation. His evolution as a writer of the first order constitutes a narrative as dramatic and compelling as his best story.

"My childhood was awful," Baldwin once said. He was born in Harlem in 1924, the son of Emma Berdis Jones, who was unmarried at the time of his birth. In 1927 when James was almost three years old, his mother married David Baldwin, a disillusioned and embittered New Orleans preacher who had...