Never before available the unexpurgated last interview with James Baldwin I was not born to be
what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else but by myself and
myself only. When in the fall of 1987 the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France
to interview James Baldwin Baldwin s brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything
Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer s last chance to speak
at length about his life and work. The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory
interviews of Baldwin s career a conversation that ranges widely over such topics as his
childhood in Harlem his close friendship with Miles Davis his relationship with writers like
Toni Morrison and Richard Wright his years in France and his ever-incisive thoughts on the
history of race relations and the African-American experience. Also collected here are
significant interviews from other moments in Baldwin s life including an in-depth interview
conducted by Studs Terkel shortly after the publication of Nobody Knows My Name. These
interviews showcase above all Baldwin s fearlessness and integrity as a writer thinker and
individual as well as the profound struggles he faced along the way.
