“In so many ways and to so many people, Hughes was 'the Negro,' or at least 'Negro literature,' its public face, its spoken voice and cocktail-party embodiment as well as the source of its printed texts.”
“Baldwin was the first of his kind, and perhaps the last we shall see for some time: the Negro writer made a celebrity and thrust into the national political dialogue.”
“Baldwin’s work opened up the world for me; it was also precisely because it did do that that it could, if not closely watched, overwhelm any perception I might eventually develop about it and the way we live now.”
