Hope Amidst Hopelessness

James Baldwin’s Letter to His Nephew

Top photo by Allen Warren. CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In perhaps the only way I’ll claim similarity to James Baldwin, I started this story multiple times before deciding on a direction. I had the disadvantage of having months before it was due, allowing procrastination to disrupt my normal process. I read his letter to his nephew many times, hoping a theme would inspire me. Instead of inspiration, I felt sadness reading Baldwin’s description of America and Harlem, particularly describing his nephew, also named James. The uncle and famous author was not kind in his description of America. He said, “Neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.”

Yet, at the end of the letter, the uncle offered encouragement, pushing the nephew to persevere and reminding him of who he was and where he had come from. The su…