Rich Blint
RICH BLINT is the 2016-2017 Scholar-in-Residence in the MFA Program in Performance + Performance Studies in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. He is co-editor of a special issue of African American Review on James Baldwin (Winter 2013); contributing editor of the James Baldwin Review; and is completing his book project, Trembling on the Edge of Confession: James Baldwin and National Innocence in Modern American Culture, as well as the introduction and notes for the e-book, Baldwin for Our Times: Writings from James Baldwin in an Age of Sorrow and Struggle forthcoming from Beacon Press.
Since 1949, James Baldwin has been singing a song. It’s an old tune, at times tender, chiding, insistent, blaring, but always loving. It is, at its core, a bluesy refrain to the country that formed him, tormented him, his contemporaries, and his kin, and ultimately drove him from its shores.
By Rich Blint
I am confounded when the elementary assertion that race and its afterlives persist in America as a clinical matter and pathological affair is read as outrageous charge and treasonous indictment.
Lawrence Weschler and Baldwin scholar, Rich Blint, recently visited the Rail headquarters, where they spent an evening discussing Baldwin, his enduring legacy, and relevance for our time.
