James Baldwin

James Baldwin was one of the twentieth century’s most searching essayists, the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955), Giovanni’s Room (1956) and The Fire Next Time (1963). Writing on race, sexuality and American identity, he made the act of facing uncomfortable truth the moral center of his work — which is exactly what this line, from a 1962 essay on the writer’s responsibility, distills.