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My name is Raseer Iq, I'm I'm Raseier Iqbal. Welcome to our podcast, Notes on a Native Sun 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 means to be an American.

Who and what James Baldwin is and his legacy can't be listed and can be found in his work.

Also any attempt to box him in is counter to what Baldwin might say about himself.

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

You had to tell the world, I'm not your label. The label belongs to you, doesn't belong to me.

And I have nothing to, I have nobody to answer to. I had to defeat the world's intentions. 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're seeing but I'm not that person and

I will make you know it and 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

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 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.

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