One of my favorite texts to discuss in a seminar is James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village,” published in Harper’s in 1953. “From all available evidence no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came,” Baldwin begins. This is where the MA Seminar “America Inside Out: International Perspectives on the United States” starts: Baldwin’s magisterial essay about America, Europe, and the West, because it both typifies and challenges much that we talk about when we talk about the “American Century.” Its last paragraph rewards quotation:
Baldwin was also a captivating speaker and interviewee. Here he is in a Dutch interview from 1981: