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A self-proclaimed disturber of the peace and subversive outsider whose modest goal was to change the world, James Baldwin is considered one of the most important American writers since World War II. As Horace A. Porter noted in his critical study, Stealing the Fire: The Art and Protest of James Baldwin, the African American writer "established a remarkable record. He wrote about race and sexuality for almost four decades. He published twenty-two books, among them six novels, a collection of short stories, ... plays, several assortments of essays, a children's book, a movie scenario, and ... a chapbook of poems." Baldwin was a self-made man and self-created persona, unique in American letters of the time. Born illegitimate, Baldwin was also both black and gay in a time of racial and sexual intolerance. He was the grandson of a slave and the stepson of a Harlem preacher and was for a time a preacher himself.
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