PEN America 2: Home and Away

This talk was originally presented at a Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute to James Baldwin, sponsored by the PEN American Center and Lincoln Center, with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The New Yorker. 

Freedom Fighter

As an international organization dedicated to the advancement of literature, PEN works to spread literacy in all communities, and to defend freedom of expression. For that reason it is easy to understand why we want to celebrate James Baldwin, a writer who was not only active with PEN but, more importantly, whose life and work have liberated minds and bodies everywhere. James Baldwin is one of those rare figures in literature and history, a man who was truly engaged in all the issues of his time. He was prescient, fierce, elegant in word and deed, and he was right. We miss him, and he still keeps us going.