The Adventures of Confuserella

“Decades after Baldwin’s death in 1987, what I found left behind in his house was something similar to what I saw as we waded through my grandfather’s house after it had burned down. In both houses, I found mail strewn in dirt piles in rooms that no longer had doors or windowpanes, and entryways nailed over to prevent trespassers like us. In each case, someone had clearly forced entry in order to drink beer. In Baldwin’s house, the scattered, empty beer cans were recent additions, as were the construction postings from a company tasked with tearing it down. So that nothing would remain. No remembrance of the past. In both places there was not even the sense that a great man had once lived there.

James Baldwin lived in his house for more than 25 years, and all that was left were half a dozen pink teacups and turquoise saucers buried by the house’s rear wall, a chipped fresco on a crumbling wall, and orange trees that were heavy with fruit bitter and sharp to the taste. We see Baldwin’s name in connection to the present condition more often than we see Faulkner’s, Whitman’s, or Thoreau’s. But we can visit the houses and places where they lived and imagine how their geography shaped them and our collective vocabulary. By next year, Baldwin’s house will just be another private memory for those who knew it.

I do not know if I will ever see his house again. If I will be able to pull sour oranges from his trees and wonder if they were so bitter when he lived there. But I do know that Baldwin died a black death.”

- Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, “The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin” http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelkaadzighansah/the-weight-of-james-arthur-baldwin-203#.wgV9ZwrVeL

(H/T Josie Pickens)

Artwork by Patrick Woodroffe