Writers as World Changers: James Baldwin

Using personal truths for universal liberation

Welcome to the monthly series where I look at how writers past and present have used their words as a force of good to create the world they want to see. Writers have always been more than storytellers. They are world-builders in the most literal sense, creating fictional universes, making meaning from their personal experiences, and reshaping the reality we live in. Each month, we'll dive deep into the lives and works of writers who refused to accept that they, and the world, had to be what they were told. I’d love to know what you think of it. 💙

Before we get started a reminder that my brand new Mindful Memoir Course starts a week today. It can help you transform life experiences into powerful, literary narratives that transform how you relate to your past and connect with readers on the deepest level. Just 1 place left!

And if you want to spend some quality time with your writing this weekend, I’m running a Zoom workshop on Saturday at 15.00 UK time: Writing Through Transitions: Mindful Approaches to Life's Changes. Join me to explore how mindful writing can help us navigate major life transitions. We’ll use specific writing prompts designed to help us process change mindfully and create meaning from these pivotal moments. Includes a guided meditation and transformative writing exercises. Book here.

In our current times of deep division, when measured and rational conversations about different beliefs can feel impossible, and telling our truth can seem like a controversial choice, James Baldwin's voice calls to us across time. He showed us that the most radical act a writer can perform is to tell the truth about their own experience with such unflinching honesty that it illuminates universal human truths. Baldwin didn't write his truths to destroy his oppressors, he wanted to free us all.

"You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it." — James Baldwin

It feels like now is a time when our words can either build bridges or blow them right up, and Baldwin's approach shows us that as long as our writing is powered by love, we can tell our truth fearlessly.

"It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate."

~ "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.)

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Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

James Baldwin grew up in Harlem, the eldest of nine children. The church was his first stage when he became a preacher at just fourteen, learning to move audiences with his words before he understood the full power of what he possessed. But the contradictions between the church's message of love and its practice of judgement drove him from the pulpit to the page. In a documentary released after his death, he said: “Those three years in the pulpit that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.”

In 1948 his essay about his childhood neighbourhood “The Harlem Ghetto,” was the first piece of writing that made people pay attention. That same year he left the US to escape racism and homophobia and went to live in Paris.

His breakthrough came with "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1953), a semi-autobiographical novel that transformed his painful childhood into art. He then wrote plays, essays, novels and short stories that spoke to the truths in his heart and the injustices he witnessed every day. He died in 1987 in France, still believing in the power of words to transform hearts.

"And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it."

~ James A. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

The Power of His Approach

The power of Baldwin's writing lay in four key elements:

Fearless Vulnerability: Baldwin wrote from the deepest places of his experience — his homosexuality, his Blackness, his poverty, his spirituality. He understood that what made him most different was also what made him most human. In "The Fire Next Time," he wrote about his sexuality and his faith with equal honesty, knowing that both would make readers uncomfortable.

Love as Resistance: Perhaps most remarkably, Baldwin wrote about racism without dehumanising white people. He saw their hatred of black people as a manifestation of their own imprisonment. "Not everything that is faced can be changed," he wrote, "but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

Personal as Political: Baldwin never separated his individual experience from what was going on in the wider world. His family dynamics, sexuality, and spirituality, were all lenses through which he examined American society.

Powerful Prose: Baldwin was a brilliant writer who understood that how you say something is as important as what you say. His sentences had rhythm and could make you feel the injustices, the joys, the fears, the love, and the anger, in your bones.

Lessons for Mindful Writers

What can we learn from his approach as we seek to create positive change through our words? Baldwin didn't begin by trying to change the world — he was trying to understand himself and where he came from, to make sense of the things he’d experienced. The things we have lived through, and grown from, are our greatest sources of wisdom. The story that we find the scariest to tell might be exactly the story the world needs to hear, and is definitely the one we need to write.

While Baldwin was enraged at the injustice he experienced and witnessed, he wrote from love. Justifiable anger at the imbalances and inequalities we witness every day can provide the initial spark for our writing, but love for our shared humanity must guide it. When our writing only has the anger and none of the love, we become part of the problem we're wanting to solve.

Our writing must embrace the contradictions that are at the heart of being human. Baldwin was religious and skeptical, American and expatriate, hopeful and despairing. He didn't try to resolve these contradictions but wrote from within them. Our complexities as humans are the truths we need to explore to bring greater understanding, compassion and connection to the world through our words.

Baldwin wrote difficult truths because he believed people could handle them. He didn't soften his message to make it palatable. When we write mindfully, we trust that our readers are capable of understanding and being changed by what we share. Our experiences, told with depth and honesty, become a mirror in which others can see themselves. The more honestly we write about our own experiences, the more universal our writing becomes. This means using everything we have learned about being human to inform our fiction, our memoir, our life writing, so that the awe and the hurt and the excitement and the confusion that defines the human experience is brought to vivid life on the page.

Writing Time

The Love Letter to Your Oppressor

Think of a person, system, or belief that has hurt you or limited your freedom. This could be a family member who didn't accept you, a societal structure that excluded you, or even that inner critic that tells you you’re lacking in some way.

Write a letter to whoever it is but approach it with love. Don’t try to excuse or minimise the harm it’s done, but try to understand it and through that understanding, transform it.

As you write, consider:

• What fears might drive this person or system or inner voice?

• How might they be imprisoned by their own limitations?

• What would healing look like for both of you?

• How has this experience, painful as it was, contributed to who you are today?

"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." — James Baldwin

Additional Prompts

• Write about a time when telling your truth changed someone else's perspective.

• Explore a story from your family history that reveals larger social patterns.

• Let a character develop in your mind who embodies both the harm and humanity you've experienced.

Community Connection

James Baldwin believed that our individual stories become powerful when they connect us to others. I believe this too. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

For reflection and discussion:

• What truths are you afraid to write about? What makes them scary?

• How can we balance honesty with compassion when writing about difficult subjects?

• What change do you hope your writing might create in the world?

• How do you write about people or systems that have hurt you while maintaining your humanity and theirs?

I’d love to read your responses to these writing exercises if you feel comfortable sharing. Or share what Baldwin's example means to you as a writer.

With love,

Next month in “Writers as World Changers” we’re looking at the life and work of Thich Nhat Hahn.

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