Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin
List: $16.95 | Sale: $11.87
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Nobody Knows My Name
More Notes of a Native Son

Author: James Baldwin

Narrator: Kevin Kenerly

Unabridged: 5 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2017

Synopsis

James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name records the last months of this famed American writer’s ten-year self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem, and his first trip south at the time of the school integration battles. It contains Baldwin’s controversial and intimate profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman. And it explores such varied themes as the relations between blacks and whites, the role of blacks in America and in Europe, and the question of sexual identity.

About James Baldwin

James Baldwin (1924–1987), acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, was educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, received excellent reviews and was immediately recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing costs of Americans’ refusal to face their own history. It became a national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time. The next year, he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for the slain Medger Evers. His other collaborations include A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and A Dialogue with the poet–activist Nikki Giovanni. He also adapted Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One Day When I Was Lost. He was made a commander of the French Legion of Honor a year before his death, one honor among many he achieved in his life.

About Kevin Kenerly

Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on March 22, 2008

Baldwin should be read by anyone and everyone. Any commentary I could make would do poor service to his writing and his ideas, but the more and more I read this book the more I appreciate his voice, reasoned, calm, pleading of an understanding to the issue of race which even the most "liberated" of......more

Goodreads review by Lucy on March 12, 2021

Greatest of all time.......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on July 13, 2017

I don't even know how to begin to express my feelings about this book, so I won't even try. All I know is that the entire day went by while reading it and I didn't even notice because I was so involved in what the author is saying here and in his writing. It's like having a conversation with the man......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on July 12, 2019

The next book in my track through Baldwin's works. I had trouble with some of his writing in Notes of a Native Son, but this is a more developed, cleaner writer and these essays are excellent. Baldwin is always on the attack through psychology. He's looking inward to find out how he really feels, an......more

Goodreads review by B. P. on November 16, 2024

"'Be careful what you set your heart upon,' someone once said to me, 'for it will surely be yours.' Well, I had said that I was going to be a writer, God, Satan, and Mississippi not-withstanding, and that color did not matter, and that I was going to be free. And, here I was, left only myself to dea......more

Quotes

“Brilliant…accomplished…masterly…A splendid book. James Baldwin is a skillful writer, a man of fine intelligence, and a true companion in the desire to make life human.” New York Times

“A bright and alive book, full of grief, love, and anger.” Chicago Tribune

“A major literary talent…Passionate, probing, controversial…A searing commentary.” Atlantic

“Narrator Kevin Kenerly does an outstanding job bringing just the right tone to a book that could have, in lesser hands (or voice, as the case may be), come across as strident or lecturing. Instead, Kenerly expertly conveys Baldwin’s struggle to understand the times in which he was living, his self-imposed exile abroad, subsequent decision to return home—and then venture into the South. The series of essays in this audiobook sheds light on the thinking of one of this country’s preeminent intellects. Baldwin could not have asked for his words to be delivered by someone better than Kevin Kenerly.” AudioFile

Awards

  • Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award
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