Hey, it's Kai, dropping into your ear for just a moment to introduce you to a very special project,

inspired by a very special person, and you're going to be able to hear it all right here on

notes from America over the next few weeks.

It's called Notes on a Native Sun and it's a podcast series that celebrates the powerful and lasting impact of

James Baldwin and right now I have the trailer for it to share with you so have a

listen and I hope you'll come back for the full series coming soon.

James Baldwin was a novelist, an essayist, a civil rights activist, a philosopher, an iconoclast,

and a man who shunned labels.

I was called all kinds of names.

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

I'm not your label.

The label belongs to you.

It doesn't belong to me.

And I have nobody to answer to.

He didn't.

Baldwin means many different things to different people.

This year, 2024 is the centennial year of his birth.

And so we thought we'd ask people to tell us about the Jimmy they love. Black Americans

claim him. Activists quote him and LGBTQ plus communities

hail him as their icon.

Notes on a native son is a new podcast featuring prominent writers and

thinkers who love Baldwin, inviting them to riff on a favorite passage.

...