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Hello, my name is Razia Iqbal.

Welcome to episode seven of our podcast Notes on a Native Son about James Baldwin.

This year, 2024, marks the 100th birth

anniversary of a man unique in American letters. He was many things to many people, novelist,

essayist, activist, seer, icon. For Baldwin, though, such lists were meaningless. Who and what James Baldwin was and what

is his legacy can't really be listed. But it can and perhaps should be found in his work. He refused

any attempt to box him in. This podcast tries to get close to the idea of getting to know Jimmy Baldwin through his work

and for those who love his words to return to them.

We've called it notes on a native son after one of Baldwin's most famous autobiographical essays,

Notes of a Native Son. That essay clarifies with considerable power, what he is and what America is on his terms.

In each episode of Notes on a Native Son, we invite a well-known figure to choose a special or significant James Baldwin passage.

The conversation that ensues often tells us as much about Baldwin's story as it does about the person who loves Jimmy,

as he was known to all who loved him.

Our guest on this episode of Notes on a Native Son is the American writer David Leaming.

Leaming was Baldwin's biographer.

Now you may not immediately regard James Baldwin as a 20th century version of Samuel Johnson,

that towering essayist and writer from the 18th century. But it is interesting that Baldwin

would tease Leaming and sometimes introduce him to people as his Boswell. That's James Boswell,

who wrote The Life of Samuel Johnson, a book which became seen as a landmark in the development

of the modern genre of biography.

Leeming in his biography of Baldwin tells us that almost from the moment he met him,

...