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Hello, my name is Raseer Iqbal.

Welcome to episode four of our podcast,

Notes on a Native son about James Baldwin,

because 2024 marks the 100th birth anniversary of a man unique in American letters.

Novelist, essayist, activist, prescient about race and racial politics in America, but also those connecting ideas,

the idealized notion of the American dream,

and what it actually means to be an American.

Who and what James Baldwin is as well as his legacy can't be listed. But it can and perhaps should be found in his work. An attempt to box him in is in any case counter to what Baldwin might say about himself.

This podcast tries to get close to the idea of getting to know Jimmy Baldwin through his work and those who love his words.

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 profound power

what he is and what he thinks America is,

on his terms.

In each episode we invite a well-known figure to choose a special or significant James Baldwin passage.

The conversation that ensues 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 writer and essayist Darrell

Pinkney.

His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and the

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