Going to Meet the Man, James Baldwin
Going to Meet the Man, James Baldwin
4 Rating(s)
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Going to Meet the Man

Author: James Baldwin

Narrator: Dion Graham

Unabridged: 7 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2011

Synopsis

“There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.” The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying—and informed throughout by Baldwin’s uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators—Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.

About James Baldwin

James Baldwin (1924–1987), acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, was educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, received excellent reviews and was immediately recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing costs of Americans’ refusal to face their own history. It became a national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time. The next year, he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for the slain Medger Evers. His other collaborations include A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and A Dialogue with the poet–activist Nikki Giovanni. He also adapted Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One Day When I Was Lost. He was made a commander of the French Legion of Honor a year before his death, one honor among many he achieved in his life.

About Dion Graham

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Flo on September 30, 2024

I don’t really think that the short story is a good form for the type of writer James Baldwin is. His style is a little too reflective and inconclusive to work well in something short. His novels and essays are the best way to absorb and appreciate his genius. That being said, Going to Meet the Man......more

Goodreads review by David on December 28, 2024

Eight satisfying stories in a startling collection. I'm happy to have re-discovered Baldwin in the past few years. As a teen, I'd only known him for his novel 'Giovanni's Room'. Though it's a powerful novel, it wasn't (at least for a teenager), the best work to know him for: it's depressing, not par......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on September 10, 2021

"Perhaps this was what the singing had meant all along. They had not been singing black folks into heaven, they had been singing white folks into hell." The fingers of historical racial injustice spread wide and touch the downtrodden in every aspect of their lives. This was evident in these stories w......more

Goodreads review by Richard on May 19, 2015

I was slightly disappointed with the first novel I read by the late great James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room. Although I found it difficult to empathize with the main character (who I found to be a little whiny and spoiled), I was really taken by how beautiful Baldwin's writing was. It was enough to kee......more

Quotes

“Dion Graham’s reading requires him to master an array of voices: hellfire-preaching ministers, deliciously profane Harlem locals,…kittenish women. Graham ranges from tremulous exertion to sudden flashes of rage, his reading flecked by an exhaustion that creeps in at the margins of Baldwin’s prose. Baldwin’s protagonists are weary of a world that allows them no respite from racism and hatred, and Graham echoes that weariness, his voice hushed and low, its register reflecting their struggle to survive.” Publishers Weekly

“Many of these situations don’t occur in quite the same ways now, but narrator Dion Graham makes them timely and universally human…a heartbreaking performance…Graham’s reading pulls the listener back to a time when [these stories] were fresh, raw wounds.” AudioFile

“Timeless in its treatment of youthful innocence, prejudice, addiction, loneliness, fear, and human suffering…Dion Graham is masterly in his rendering of the vast array of characters in these eight disparate tales. Highly recommended.” Library Journal

“All of these tales have an undeniable urgency, power, and anger…Symphonic in structure, mixing religious and sexual motifs, encompassing various shades of characters and situations…memorable in every sense; funny, sad, colorful, it is a triumphant performance.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • Audie Award Finalist
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