American Myth

“There is an illusion about America, a myth to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don’t believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it—and almost all of us have one way or another—this collision between one’s image of one’s self and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head on and try to become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you though you were, which is fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.”
-James Baldwin
From “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel”
In “Nobody Knows My Name

Reading James Baldwin always makes me feel better. Because the issues he dealt with and discussed so eloquently and in such a relative way then are still being echoed right now everyday. His language was so nuanced and so inclusive of something which I believe sought to transcend the boundaries of labels we know so well and seem to be so comfortable settling for that it helps me to feel less alone in feeling that there must be so much more to me than what society would seek to define based on mere relational and occupational roles, more than gender, race and class constructs can begin to tell the story of.

Here is a great article in the New York Times on the collection of essays "Nobody Knows My Name" by Irving Howe