Marginalized Identities and Spaces: James Baldwin's Harlem, New York

James Baldwin's stories concentrate on racially and sexually marginalized identities placed within cosmopolitan capitals (Paris and New York). In such novels as Another Country, Baldwin explores antonyms, contrasting ideals and ideologies, and the formation of nonconforming relationships. Individual desire and external social pressure create a complex tension that pulls white and black, homo- and heterosexual characters toward and away from each other. Space repeatedly appears as reflective of the inner landscapes of the characters who are intricately linked to the space in which they act. Similar tensions that characterize their inner conflicts appear also in the concept of cosmopolitanism that defines the cities they inhabit. Indeed, a cosmopolitan world citizen, who is at home everywhere but not belonging anywhere, is torn between opposing forces, between inclusion and exclusion. Similarly, Baldwin's fiction examines inclusion and exclusion, steering, however, away from simplified constructions of centrality and marginality.