James Baldwin vs. William Saroyan
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
James Baldwin
1924 – 1987
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality.
"Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."
William Saroyan
1908 – 1981
William Saroyan was an American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.
"What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace."
Connections
Both wrote about: