James Baldwin challenged everything about us that was wrong. His powerful words enabled him to cut deep into our ignorance. He felt the sting of categorical prejudice. He understood that we would probably never truly change, but that his words could somehow call us out...make us pay for our cruelty towards one another.

I love to read some authors because of the sense of well being I receive. Writers like Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and others give us reality with some message of hope that we can change. James Baldwin just gave us the facts. And the fact is...true change almost never happens, unfortunately. He was a geniune literary genius.