God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin
Edited with text by Hilton Als. Text by Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.
Baldwin’s life and legacy as remembered by a pantheon of artists and writers: from Jamaica Kincaid and Barry Jenkins to Richard Avedon and Alice Neel
When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an extraordinary body of work: novels, poems, film scripts and, perhaps most indelibly, essays. A friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was a critical voice in the civil rights movement. After reaching acclaim in his early career as a writer, he struggled to retain the author’s “I,” while taking on the “we” of the people. Edited by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als and growing out of his landmark exhibition at David Zwirner in 2019, God Made My Face brings together an impressive assembly of contributors, ranging from Baldwin biographer David Leeming to novelist Jamaica Kincaid and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, to create a memorial mosaic: one that not only mirrors Baldwin’s various tones but also closely examines his singular contributions to cinema, theater, the essay and Black American critical studies. These essays are illustrated by artwork from modern and contemporary artists who were either personal contemporaries of Baldwin or directly inspired by his work. In each piece assembled here, the authors speak from a personal, informed perspective, illuminating Baldwin’s deeply anguished and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately—because we are human—we share the potential to love, connect and live together in all our glory. Artists include: Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, Larry Wolhandler. Authors include:Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.
Featured image is reproduced from 'God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Scott Manley Hadley
A beautiful book. A magical book. An important book. And it cost me next to nothing. A book about James Baldwin. Like many of the best books are. What a luxury. What a treasure. What a magical thing to have.
Widewalls
Hesper Cane
Each of the essays takes an inherently personal stance, echoing Baldwin's willingness to strip bear before his readers.
Brooklyn Rail
Amber Jamilla Musser
Hilton Als teaches us how to attend to Baldwin, moving us toward a new theorization of portraiture.
Dirt
Michelle Santiago Cortés
The book encourages a reading so close that the author's own breath can be felt on the reader’s face.
Bay Area Reporter
Cornelius Washington
God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin' is a delicious assemblage of interviews, essays and works of art by talented and learned intellectuals and artists. The book is so lovingly done, leaving one not only breathless, but also avid to learn more about not only Baldwin's art, but him as a person, lamenting his untimely death in 1987 at the age of 63.
Hyperallergic
Jasmine Weber
God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin' helps render a clearer picture of one of history’s greatest writers.
Hyperallergic
Jasmine Weber
It is near-impossible for us to truly know the writer, despite this inheritance of written words, but 'God Made My Face' helps bring him into deeper focus.
Bookforum
Harmony Holiday
He’s more alive than most of the living writers we know, his torch is still lit and cannot be passed. Nevertheless, we keep going to meet him, we keep letting him down from the pedestal just to send him back up there alone like our perfect black Sisyphus. What we say about him reveals us.
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Saturday Feb 17 at 4 PM, please join Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore to celebrate God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin—published by Dancing Foxes Press and the Brooklyn Museum—with a signing by the book's editor, the acclaimed curator, author and educator Hilton Als.
Due to limited capacity, please RSVP here.
Pre-order a book signed by Hilton Als here. continue to blog
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of James Baldwin, we present a few spreads from God Made My Face a collective portrait of the singular American writer and truth-teller edited by Hilton Als and presenting artworks and essays by some of the greatest, and most relevant, voices of our time—including Diane Arbus, Beauford Delaney, Alice Neel, Kara Walker, Teju Cole, Barry Jenkins and Darryl Pinckney, to name a few. Jamaica Kincaid writes, “When we make art, we don’t know how it will work out, what it will mean. The writing, the novels, the essays: He did them in a place and in a time, in a country, that has no real love of certain people and certain things and no real love of literature, no real love of Black people doing anything, really, that can’t be appropriated. We must remember that there are a great many things that African Americans have done, making something out of the despair and the horror of the mess they found themselves in, and that they’ve been simply lifted up out of their culture. The blind faith he had in just saying these things, writing these things, doing, living this life and not knowing how it would go. Would it be remembered? Would it vanish? He got inspiration, it seems to me, from the essential life that was going on in the country at the time, the essential life of America, which is something Americans would like to forget. The essential existence of America is the African American. Toni Morrison said that Baldwin was her brother and her ancestor, and that’s what he is for all of us.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 176 pgs / 80 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $56.95 GBP £32.99 ISBN: 9781954947092 PUBLISHER: Dancing Foxes Press/Brooklyn Museum AVAILABLE: 3/19/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin
Published by Dancing Foxes Press/Brooklyn Museum. Edited with text by Hilton Als. Text by Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.
Baldwin’s life and legacy as remembered by a pantheon of artists and writers: from Jamaica Kincaid and Barry Jenkins to Richard Avedon and Alice Neel
When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an extraordinary body of work: novels, poems, film scripts and, perhaps most indelibly, essays. A friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was a critical voice in the civil rights movement. After reaching acclaim in his early career as a writer, he struggled to retain the author’s “I,” while taking on the “we” of the people.
Edited by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als and growing out of his landmark exhibition at David Zwirner in 2019, God Made My Face brings together an impressive assembly of contributors, ranging from Baldwin biographer David Leeming to novelist Jamaica Kincaid and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, to create a memorial mosaic: one that not only mirrors Baldwin’s various tones but also closely examines his singular contributions to cinema, theater, the essay and Black American critical studies. These essays are illustrated by artwork from modern and contemporary artists who were either personal contemporaries of Baldwin or directly inspired by his work. In each piece assembled here, the authors speak from a personal, informed perspective, illuminating Baldwin’s deeply anguished and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately—because we are human—we share the potential to love, connect and live together in all our glory.
Artists include: Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, Larry Wolhandler.
Authors include:Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.
