Summary

“Stranger in the Village” is about Baldwin’s time in a tiny Swiss village whose residents were fascinated by his blackness because they had never seen a black man before. The village is four hours from Milan and three hours from Lausanne, but because it is in the mountains, it is extremely isolated. Only 600 people live in the village, and its only attraction is hot spring water. Baldwin spends two weeks there one summer and returns that winter to work in a place with no distractions. All the villagers thus know his name, but they are so fascinated by the color of his skin that they do not see him as a real person. The children run after him shouting “Neger!” and though their cries are totally innocent and they are simply calling out the color of his skin, the word...