But many years later, in 1980, the two men met at an African Literature Association conference in Gainesville where they had both been asked to speak. Baldwin was in France at the time, and Achebe was much disappointed. Barrie chance meeting, when Chinua Achebe received a UNESCO travel grant in 1963, he chose the United States as one of his two destinations with the particular hope of meeting James Baldwin. For more on the relationship between James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney, see Rachel Coehn's beautiful A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists.Īnd in a We Too Were Children, Mr. Children's literature is a province of its own, a fact which the literati do not take seriously enough. But it is a slight book, and it was written by a man I will always honor cannot alter this assessment. I wish I could love this book, because I love James Baldwin. To see more of Yoran Cazac's art for Little Man Little Man, see my Flickr set here.įor a much superior treatment of Little Man Little Man, see Julius Lester's New York Times review. If anyone knows anything further, please get in touch and I will append it to this post. Outside of the scant information above, taken from James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming, I have been unable to uncover more about Yoran Cazac. It was Delaney who introduced Baldwin to Yoran Cazac in Paris. Delaney became a mentor to Baldwin, who often spoke of him as a "spiritual father." In later years, as Delaney succumbed to mental illness and was unable to care for himself, Baldwin legally acted in the role of family to oversee his affairs. Baldwin met Delaney when he was fourteen, the first self-supporting artist he had ever met, and like Baldwin, Delaney was black and homosexual. THE NOVEL IS DEDICATED to the eminent African-American artist Beauford Delaney.
Man puts on his record player and Blinky begins to dance, which starts TJ to dancing, and soon all of them, the adults included, are laughing away. The event casts a somber pall over the day until Mr. While the children see her as a healer-"'Did you used to be a nurse?'"-the adult reader understands that Miss Lee is an alcoholic, and it is she who dropped the bottle. Miss Lee is sent for, and when she arrives, she attends to WT's wounds. The children manage to get WT to the basement where Mr.
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