Baldwin: The Fire They Tried to Extinguish. How James Baldwin learned to love himself. His lost battles. Hidden loves and his enduring legacy.

Although James Baldwin died in 1987, he feels very much alive in this fractured moment in America. His writings, his self-aware posture in photographs, his clap-back videos are all fuel for the fire that rages in a culture of memeification on social media. But Baldwin’s true legacy is minimized and flattened when served up in small doses on our hand-held devices. He was a complex man who lived many lives across many cultures and countries, in shifting landscapes. And his books that are still in wide circulation reveal his genius, but the origin story behind a writer’s unique perspective is never spelled out clearly on the page. We see the words. But you don’t fully see the writer. You have to dig deeper to find that.A new book by Nicholas Boggs called Baldwin: A Love Story excavates Baldwin’s life in a New York Times bestselling biography that helps us understand Baldwin in new ways. If you take the time to listen to this interview and read his book (I hope you will do both), you might be amazed at what you learn about Baldwin. He wrote a little-known children’s book. He made three suicide attempts. An early viewing of a Bette Davis film helped him take pride in his own heavy-lidded eyes, which were the source of scorn and constant hazing.SAY WHAT? Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Many will automatically associate Baldwin with Paris, but he also lived in Switzerland and Corsica, and much of his most important work was done in Istanbul. Baldwin walked away from a film project about The Autobiography of Malcom X because a producer considered casting a white man in the lead role. (Sidney Potter, James Earl Jones, and Charlton Heston were under consideration. Heston would have had to be darkened up a bit.) Boggs reports that Billy Dee Williams was the actor Baldwin had in mind. Baldwin was not allowed to speak at the March on Washington for fear that he would be too inflammatory or go off script. Instead, Burt Lancaster read his speech. (Yes, you read that right)Baldwin was pilloried in the latter part of his life and deemed passé by publications like Time Magazine that had only years earlier placed him on the cover.We dive into all of this in our interview.Nick Boggs uses a new and ingenious framing to explore the iconic writer’s life and legacy. Unlike many previous biographies that focus primarily on Baldwin’s public and literary life, Boggs uses both narrative nonfiction and a traditional biography to examine how key relationships in Baldwin’s life shaped his work and outlook. The book looks at family, friendships, and rivalries, but the core tentpoles are four intimate and artistic relationships with men Baldwin loved deeply: The Black American painter Beauford Delaney, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger, the Turkish actor Engin Cezzar, and the French artist Yoran Cazac, who co-authored a children’s book with Baldwin.* Mentor/painter Beauford Delaney* Swiss painter-lover Lucien Happersberger* Turkish actor/collaborator Engin Cezzar* French artist/love-figure Yoran CazacBy framing Baldwin’s life through these relationships — emotional, romantic, artistic, sometimes combative — he draws out how Baldwin’s private life and public work intertwine and provide a backdrop to better understand how Baldwin navigated a world that was not always ready to accept or acknowledge his genius, but seemed more than willing to weaponize his longing and vulnerability.Boggs traveled to Harlem, Paris, Switzerland, Istanbul, Africa, the American South, and the South of France, tracing Baldwin’s multi-culti, transnational life. He spent a decade drawing on newly unearthed archival material, original interviews, and rich research.This was a RICH and multi-layered conversation about a man that means so much to so many but is nonetheless still so misunderstood. For some, he’s a civil rights activist who brought A-listers together to interrogate racism. Legions see him as a gifted writer, poet, filmmaker, director, fashion icon, and a clapback king who lives forever in a constant stream of memes online that let us almost speak him in the present tense. He was an early LGBTQ warrior before the world had the language to even talk openly about sexuality and gender agency. He was/is an example of reinvention, a spinner of inspirational prose, and a former childhood street preacher who never fully stepped away from the proverbial pulpit.I hope you will watch and listen to the full interview with Nicholas Boggs here on Substack. I also hope you will take the teen to dive into. his book. It is the first biography of Baldwin in more than 30 years and this work adds much to our understanding of Baldwin’s life and legacy. And finally, I hope you will share your thoughts on the book, Baldwin, and his influence on your own life.THANK YOU, NICK, for making time for this.PS. The Baldwin bit of wisdom that I return to time and time again:“You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its ideal of you” - James Baldwin.My best to all of you, Michele!References and Extras:Debate: James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley (1965) Black Atlantic Accent on Dick CavettJames Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni “A Conversation”. Full Broadcast VideoThanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.ABOUT NICHOLAS BOGGS:Nicholas Boggs is the New York Times bestselling author of Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of the iconic figure in over three decades. He also co-edited a new edition of Baldwin’s collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018). He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Most recently he was the 2024-2025 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he received his BA from Yale and his PhD from Columbia, both in English, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He now resides in New York City. Get full access to Say What? with Michele Norris at michelenorris.substack.com/subscribe