No Name in the Street

He was one of our best essayists in the best American gadfly tradition

Ralph Ellison

What makes his essays so compelling is that he insists on being personal, on forcing the public and the political to submit to his voice and the test of his experience and his observation

Colm Tóibín

If Van Gogh was our 19th century artist-saint then James Baldwin is our 20th century one

Michael Ondaatje

Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Baldwin’s essayistic reflections are often marked by the personal: he uses anecdotes from his own life to uncover more universal truths . . . the clarity, fire and empathetic humanity of his voice is needed now more than ever

Colin Grant, Guardian

Baldwin wrote in arias of feeling and thought… [He] proved that if he wrote it down, it could have power beyond the moment

Hilton Als

Praise for James Baldwin

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It contains truth that cannot be denied

The Atlantic

Mesmerizing... as candid, insightful and moving as any in his previous essays... His message is finally as basic as it is undeniable: If we do not love one another, we will destroy one another

The New York Times

There is still pleasure in his inimitable voice. That voice was heard aloud in the debates and interviews he gave which made Baldwin a great example of that extinct species, the public intellectual

The Times

A strikingly personal book… an assessment of where the traumatic events of the late-1960s left Americans, both white and black… Baldwin’s prose style is as striking in No Name in the Street as in many of his other essays… [his] words still burn on the page

David Olusoga, New Statesman