God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin
Copublished with the Brooklyn MuseumEdited by Hilton Als
With texts by Hilton Als, Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, and Darryl Pinckney
Design by Joseph Logan
176 pages, 110 images, hardcover with jacket, 6 5/8 x 9 1/2 inches
ISBN 13: 978-1-954947-09-2
$39.95
When James Baldwin died in 1987 at the age of sixty-three, he left behind an extraordinary body of work. Novels, poems, film scripts, and, perhaps most indelibly, essays constituted the great artist’s writing, which was not divisible from his work and subsequent fame as a civil rights activist. A friend to and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was the voice of a movement—a voice that struggled after his early recognition as a creator to retain the author’s “I,” while taking on the “We” of his people.
In God Made My Face, edited by Hilton Als on the occasion of the centenary of Baldwin’s birth, texts by Hilton Als, Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, and Darryl Pinckney create a kind of mosaic, one that not only mirror’s Baldwin’s various voices but examines, closely, his sui generis contributions to cinema, theater, the essay, and Black American critical studies—including queerness. Each author speaks from a personal, informed perspective—through voices that are both imbued with Baldwin’s deeply personal, anguished, and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately, because we are human, we share the potential to love and connect.
With images of artwork by Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, and Larry Wolhandler
Praise and Press
A beautiful book. A magical book. An important book. And it cost me next to nothing. A book about James Baldwin. Like many of the best books are. What a luxury. What a treasure. What a magical thing to have.
—Scott Manley HadleyEach of the essays takes an inherently personal stance, echoing Baldwin’s willingness to strip bear before his readers.
—Hesper Cane, WidewallsHilton Als teaches us how to attend to Baldwin, moving us toward a new theorization of portraiture.
—Amber Jamilla Musser, Brooklyn RailThe book encourages a reading so close that the author’s own breath can be felt on the reader’s face.
—Michelle Santiago Cortés, DirtGod Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ is a delicious assemblage of interviews, essays and works of art by talented and learned intellectuals and artists. The book is so lovingly done, leaving one not only breathless, but also avid to learn more about not only Baldwin’s art, but him as a person, lamenting his untimely death in 1987 at the age of 63.
—Cornelius Washington, Bay Area ReporterGod Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ helps render a clearer picture of one of history’s greatest writers.
It is near-impossible for us to truly know the writer, despite this inheritance of written words, but ‘God Made My Face’ helps bring him into deeper focus.
—Jasmine Weber, HyperallergicHe’s more alive than most of the living writers we know, his torch is still lit and cannot be passed. Nevertheless, we keep going to meet him, we keep letting him down from the pedestal just to send him back up there alone like our perfect black Sisyphus. What we say about him reveals us.
—Harmony Holiday, Bookforum
A beautiful book. A magical book. An important book. And it cost me next to nothing. A book about James Baldwin. Like many of the best books are. What a luxury. What a treasure. What a magical thing to have.
Each of the essays takes an inherently personal stance, echoing Baldwin’s willingness to strip bear before his readers.
Hilton Als teaches us how to attend to Baldwin, moving us toward a new theorization of portraiture.
The book encourages a reading so close that the author’s own breath can be felt on the reader’s face.
God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ is a delicious assemblage of interviews, essays and works of art by talented and learned intellectuals and artists. The book is so lovingly done, leaving one not only breathless, but also avid to learn more about not only Baldwin’s art, but him as a person, lamenting his untimely death in 1987 at the age of 63.
God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin’ helps render a clearer picture of one of history’s greatest writers.
—Jasmine Weber, Hyperallergic
He’s more alive than most of the living writers we know, his torch is still lit and cannot be passed. Nevertheless, we keep going to meet him, we keep letting him down from the pedestal just to send him back up there alone like our perfect black Sisyphus. What we say about him reveals us.