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Hello, my name is Razia Iqbal.

Welcome to Notes on a Native Son, a podcast about the writer James Baldwin.

This year, 2024, marks the 100th birth anniversary of a man unique in American letters.

He was many things to many different people, novelist, essayist, activist, icon, seer.

For Baldwin, though, such lists were meaningless.

Who and what James Baldwin was and what is his legacy can't truly be listed, but it can and perhaps should be found in his work.

He himself refused any attempt to box him in.

I was called all kinds of names. I had all kinds of labels on me before I was 19 years old.

Well, you tell the world I'm not your label. You know, the label belongs to you, it doesn't belong to me.

And I have nothing to, I have nobody to answer to.

I had to defeat the world's intentions.

And the only way I could do that was to make it very clear

that I am not at all what I seem to be to you.

I know what you are seeing, but I'm not that person.

And I will make you know it that I'm not that person.

I'll make you know it that I'm not that person.

I make you know that I'm Jimmy Baldwin.

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 powerfully clarifies what he is and what America is on James Baldwin's terms.

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