SOURCE: "James Baldwin," in James Baldwin: The Legacy, edited by Quincy Troupe, Simon & Schuster, 1989, pp. 213-17.

Chinua Achebe is a novelist whose works include Things Fall Apart and Anthills of the Savannah. In the following essay, he asserts the value of James Baldwin's legacy.

The many and varied tributes to Jimmy Baldwin, like the blind men's version of the elephant, are consistent in one detail—the immensity, the sheer prodigality of endowment.

When my writing first began to yield small rewards in the way of free travel, UNESCO came along and asked where I would like to go. Without hesitation I said, "U.S.A. and Brazil." And so I came to the Americas for the first time in 1963.

My intention, which was somewhat nebulous to begin with, was to find out how the Africans of the diaspora were faring in the two largest countries of the New...