for France in 1972 at the age of 24 to escape racial and sexual bigotry and establish life as a writer. What he did do, in context, was oversee and co-edit, along with Jennifer DeVere Brody, the republication of the late James Baldwin's 'Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood' - a largely forgotten and long out-of-print book about the challenges and joys of a Black child growing up in 1920s Harlem.īaldwin, of course, was the visionary Black author whose works also include groundbreaking titles like 'Go Tell It On the Mountain,' 'Notes of a Native Son,' 'If Beale Street Could Talk' and 'The Fire Next Time.' And the republication of 'Little Man, Little Man,' which Baldwin regarded as a 'child's book for adults,' is an important rediscovery in a developing literary renaissance for writers of color. Nicholas Boggs, January's Merrill House author, didn't actually write a children's book. Without disparaging the obvious importance of children's literature, it's accurate to say that not many would-be James Merrill House writers-in-residence jot down 'KID'S BOOK' on their applications. She is currently working on a book entitled Uncommon Vision: Extraordinary Lives.Merrill House writer Nicholas Boggs talks about James Baldwin John the Divine, is an author and journalist. and Ph.D., both in English, from Florida State University, and she teaches workshops at Catapult and Gotham Writers Workshop in New York.Įlizabeth Howard, the inaugural Madeleine L’Engle Fellow at the Cathedral of St.

Gabrielle Bellot, a staff writer for Literary Hub, has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Cut, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, and Guernica. He is currently at work on a literary biography of Baldwin. His writing has been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin and James Baldwin Now. Nicholas Boggs, who teaches in the Department of English at New York University, served as co-editor and author of the introduction to a new edition of Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street).

This includes the novel and newly released movie If Beale Street Could Talk, and the children’s book Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, at Close Conversation: Interpreting James Baldwin Today on Tuesday, January 22 at 6:30 p.m. John the Divine will welcome writers Nicholas Boggs, Gabrielle Bellot, and Elizabeth Howard to discuss works by American novelist and social critic James Baldwin.

Little man james baldwin