Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was the oldest of nine children and a grandson of enslaved people. His love affair with language began in middle school, where he was fortunate to have Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen as one of his teachers. Baldwin knew by the time he was 14 that he wanted to be a writer, and his talents were encouraged at the then-prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

Baldwin’s upbringing in the Baptist church (his stepfather was a preacher) influenced his awareness of language’s power, which he conveys in this essay. While a young teenager, Baldwin worked for three years as a preacher, and in the essay he draws on Biblical references and discusses the power of the Black church in the making of Black English. He ended that vocation at 18, when he also moved away from his childhood home.

Baldwin left the United States for Europe in 1948 at age 24. He said that he hoped to escape both the racism he experienced and the antigay environment in Harlem (New York City) at that time. Although he initially refrained from publicly speaking of himself as a gay man, he also didn’t hide his romantic relationships with men, and his 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room marked a watershed in queer literature.