Browse
This essay presents ten notes, historical and speculative, sparked by the fact that two of the classics of American queer writing, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” (1964), were partly inspired by the same tiny Paris hotel room. In place of a case for buried collaboration, I take inspiration from the coincidence of Baldwin and Sontag’s shared space to think their differences together—a conjunction which reveals larger things about the Baldwin we have revived, the Sontag we are reviving, and our residual habit of picturing queer modernism as a star map of individual, trademarked celebrity-functions. Fresh concentration on Sontag and Baldwin’s neglected interactions might help to save both from the distortions of the revivalist spotlight.
In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois discusses the historical and cultural importance of the Black preacher as “a leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’… the centre of a group of men.” I propose we reimagine Du Bois’s Black preacher figure—in his words, “the most unique personality developed on American soil”—as a Black woman. Additionally, we should examine the sermon in African American literature as we focus on womanist preachers and spiritual figures such as Margaret Alexander in The Amen Corner, the sisters in Go Tell It on the Mountain, and most significantly, Julia in Just Above My Head. Coining the term, “womanist hermeneutic of regeneration,” this article demonstrates the affective power of examining blue note womanist preachers and spiritual figures in James Baldwin’s work.
Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies, Ernest Champion was instrumental in bringing James Baldwin to the Bowling Green campus. Upon Baldwin’s death, December 1, 1987, Champion wrote the following remembrance, which has not been previously published.