James Baldwin: The Making of an American Icon

As a Radcliffe fellow, Robert F. Reid-Pharr RI '21 is completing a draft of “James Baldwin: The Making of an American Icon.” Drawing heavily on archival materials housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Houghton and Beinecke Libraries of Harvard and Yale Universities, the book is conservatively biographical in that it follows the story of Baldwin’s life from birth to death. At its core, however, the work is an attempt to understand how Baldwin achieved his fantastic celebrity status and why his image continues to be so compelling to the public.

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