James Baldwin′s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile

Published in 2009, James Baldwin′s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile examines Baldwin’s time in Turkey during the 60s and early 70s:

Following Baldwin’s footsteps through Istanbul, Ankara, and Bodrum, Zaborowska presents many never published photographs, new information from Turkish archives, and original interviews with Turkish artists and intellectuals who knew Baldwin and collaborated with him on a play that he directed in 1969. She analyzes the effect of his experiences on his novel Another Country (1962) and on two volumes of his essays, The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972), and she explains how Baldwin’s time in Turkey informed his ambivalent relationship to New York, his responses to the American South, and his decision to settle in southern France. James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade expands the knowledge of Baldwin’s role as a transnational African American intellectual, casts new light on his later works, and suggests ways of reassessing his earlier writing in relation to ideas of exile and migration.

blurb excerpt via Duke University Press

I had no idea he had spent time in Turkey, let alone a decade. I have some reading to do.

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