James Baldwin: Living in Fire
Program Date: August 6th, 2024
James Baldwin is an icon of liberation who created some of his time’s most important literary works, including the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain and If Beale Street Could Talk. Bill Mullen celebrates the life of this great African-American writer and activist in his book James Baldwin: Living in Fire.
As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, James Baldwin was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, the Palestinian liberation movement, and the rise of LGBTQ+ rights.
Mullen pays homage to Baldwin’s radical approach to life, writing, and activism. Constantly struggling for an anti-racist, emancipated world, Baldwin’s philosophy and politics were ahead of their time, anticipating and leading to many of today’s movements such as Black Lives Matter.
Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue. His books include UnAmerican: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution (Temple UP, 2015); W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line (Pluto, 2016); Afro-Orientalism (Minnesota, 2004) a study of interethnic anti-racist alliance between Asian and African Americans, and Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics 1935-1946 (University of Illinois, 1999).