What America’s Nice Prophet Can Train Us About Life, Love, and Identification by Greg Garrett
Greg Garrett. Orbis, $24 (192p) ISBN 9781626985391
On this introspective outing, Garrett (Entertaining Judgment), an English professor at Baylor College, frames James Baldwin (1924–1987) as a type of “prophet of humanity,” who supplied penetrating commentary on America’s failures whereas envisioning a extra loving future. As a cultural critic, for instance, Baldwin interrogated the racial, spiritual, and sexual stereotypes embedded in such books and movies as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), during which Black doctor Dr. John Wade Prentice (performed by Sidney Poitier) serves as “not a lot a personality as a perform, a fable created to make white audiences capable of settle for the interracial romance that drives the story,” writes Garrett. And whereas Baldwin “formally left the church” in his teenagers, Garrett believes “the spark of Jesus inside [him]… by no means went out”; Baldwin himself famous in an 1963 interview: “Each artist is essentially spiritual…. I haven’t been in a church for twenty years. However, when [William] Blake talks in regards to the New Jerusalem, I imagine.” This undercurrent of religion is evidenced, in keeping with Garrett, by Baldwin’s imaginative and prescient of the Christian idea of “The Welcome Desk, a spot the place all could be revered, cherished, seen, recognized, and fed” in an unfinished play of the identical title. In the end, Garrett hopes that readers, when confronted by Baldwin’s important views on race, justice, and religion, will grapple with America’s previous and “arise and say what’s mistaken—and what’s proper.” This thoughtprovoking work casts a literary big in a brand new mild. (Sept.)
Particulars
Reviewed on: 06/27/2023
Style: Faith
Paperback – 224 pages – 9781608339969
Greg Garrett. Orbis, $24 (192p) ISBN 9781626985391
On this introspective outing, Garrett (Entertaining Judgment), an English professor at Baylor College, frames James Baldwin (1924–1987) as a type of “prophet of humanity,” who supplied penetrating commentary on America’s failures whereas envisioning a extra loving future. As a cultural critic, for instance, Baldwin interrogated the racial, spiritual, and sexual stereotypes embedded in such books and movies as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), during which Black doctor Dr. John Wade Prentice (performed by Sidney Poitier) serves as “not a lot a personality as a perform, a fable created to make white audiences capable of settle for the interracial romance that drives the story,” writes Garrett. And whereas Baldwin “formally left the church” in his teenagers, Garrett believes “the spark of Jesus inside [him]… by no means went out”; Baldwin himself famous in an 1963 interview: “Each artist is essentially spiritual…. I haven’t been in a church for twenty years. However, when [William] Blake talks in regards to the New Jerusalem, I imagine.” This undercurrent of religion is evidenced, in keeping with Garrett, by Baldwin’s imaginative and prescient of the Christian idea of “The Welcome Desk, a spot the place all could be revered, cherished, seen, recognized, and fed” in an unfinished play of the identical title. In the end, Garrett hopes that readers, when confronted by Baldwin’s important views on race, justice, and religion, will grapple with America’s previous and “arise and say what’s mistaken—and what’s proper.” This thoughtprovoking work casts a literary big in a brand new mild. (Sept.)
Particulars
Reviewed on: 06/27/2023
Style: Faith
Paperback – 224 pages – 9781608339969