Race, Dissent, and Literary Imagination in John Bunyan and James Baldwin

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 21; pp. 9 - 32
• Main Author: Breen, Margaret Sönser
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Adolescents; African American literature; Allegory; Allusion; American literature; Baldwin, James (1924-1987); Bible; Bildungsroman; Biographies; Black Lives Matter movement; British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Christianity; English literature; Essays; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Fate; Grief; Intersectionality; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary translation; Literature; Murders & murder attempts; Narrative techniques; Narratives; Novels; Oppression; Plot (Narrative); Politics; Race; Rankine, Claudia (1963- ); Readers; Religion; Sexuality; Spirituality
• ISSN: 0954-0970

'Since I had been born in a Christian nation, I accepted this Deity as the only one. The novel blends elements of autobiography, biblical language, along with religious conversion, with a homoerotic coming-of-age narrative in which Baldwin begins his life-long literary mission to explore the interconnections between black churches and racial struggle and, in so doing, to articulate a vision of spiritual renewal that reconciles sex, sexuality, and religion.29 For Baldwin biographer and friend David Leeming, John Grimes is the first example of Baldwin's literary 'poet-prophet[s]',30 the figure at work as well in his second major work, the landmark gay novel Giovanni's Room (1956), and in such important essay collections as The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). [...]there is that distinctly early modern phrasing in the passage regarding David's 'nakedness', which he must 'hold sacred', even though 'it be never so vile'. Begun in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement, in particular through its politics of mourning and memorialization, has shaped political and cultural responses to the shootings of black teenagers and adults in the United States, including, in June 2015, the slaying of nine worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (see Claudia Rankine, '"The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning": The Murder of Three Men and Six Women at a Church in Charleston is a National Tragedy, but in America, the Killing of Black People is an Unending Spectacle', New York Times Magazine, 22 June 2015).