Titans in conversation: James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe discuss history, art, politics

(James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe: … African Atlantic discourses, University of Florida, Gainesville, 9 April 1980…)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THURSDAY 2 August 2018 is the 94th birthday of James Baldwin – novelist, essayist, commentator, dramatist, arguably African America’s leading writer and intellectual during its age of freedom affirmation, 1950s-1990s. 

As part of this week’s commemoration of the birthday, re-thinkingafrica here reissues that Baldwin’s historic conversation with Chinua Achebe, Father of African Literature (University of Florida, Gainesville, 9 April 1980), originally published by brainpickings.

...Reflections on history, art, politics, brainpickings, 22 September 2014,

(https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/21/james-baldwin-chinua-achebe-art/), accessed 28 September 2014.

(Sam Rivers Quartet, “Ellipsis” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 11 December 1964])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

93rd birthday of James Baldwin

(Born 2 August 1924, Harlem, New York, US)

Novelist, essayist, commentator, dramatist, arguably African America’s leading writer and intellectual during its age of freedom affirmation, 1950s-1990s

(The iconoclastic Baldwin in conversation with the Father of African Literature: … African Atlantic discourses, Gainesville, Florida, US, 9 April 1980…)

...Reflections on history, art, politics, brainpickings, 22 September 2014,

(https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/21/james-baldwin-chinua-achebe-art/), accessed 28 September 2014

(Sam Rivers Quartet, “Ellipsis” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 11 December 1964])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

In this week of the 86th birthday of the Father of African Literature, we recall that enduring conversation at the African Literature Association conference in Gainesville, Florida, United States (9 April 1980) between two of the foremost intellectuals of the African Atlantic: Chinua Achebe and James Baldwin (Maria Popova, “James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe”, brainpickings, 24 September 2014)

(James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe: … African Atlantic discourses, Gainesville, Florida, US, 9 April 1980…)

...Reflections on history, art, politics, brainpickings, 22 September 2014,

(https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/21/james-baldwin-chinua-achebe-art/), accessed 28 September 2014

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

African Atlantic discourses: Chinua Achebe and Langston Hughes

(Visiting poet, novelist, playwright, freedom movement exponent and distinguished Harlem Renaissance [1920s-1930s] alumnus Langston Hughes, 60, in conversation with novelist Chinua Achebe, 31, outside the [then] Achebes’ home, Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria, August 1962)

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with multiinstrmentalist Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe