Nothing Personal
Baldwin's other book-length collaboration, made with the photographer Richard Avedon in 1964.
Read our take
A Dialogue
by James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni
James Baldwin was forty-seven, Nikki Giovanni twenty-eight. A London television studio, one evening in November 1971, and neither of them willing to let the other off easily.
- 1973
About James Baldwin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe transcript of the conversation between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni taped in London on 4 November 1971 for the Black television program Soul!, published by J. B. Lippincott in 1973 with a foreword by Ida Lewis and an afterword by Orde M. Coombs. The two poets and essayists — a generation apart — argue about men and women, church and rage, what a Black writer owes, and what America does to the people who love it. The broadcast aired on WNET that December; the book preserves the whole exchange.
The story, in more detail
Soul!, the Black arts program on public television, brought Baldwin and Giovanni together in a London studio on 4 November 1971. Baldwin was living in the South of France, the elder statesman of Black American letters; Giovanni was the fast-rising poet of the Black Arts generation, twenty-eight to his forty-seven.
The program aired the conversation that December. What makes it last is the friction: Giovanni pushes Baldwin hardest on Black men and Black women — on what tenderness costs when the world humiliates a man at work — and Baldwin pushes back on rage, the church he left, and what a writer can actually change.
Lippincott published the full transcript in 1973 as A Dialogue, with the editor Ida Lewis introducing it and the writer Orde M. Coombs closing it. It reads in an evening, and it is one of the few places Baldwin's spoken voice — looping, courteous, sudden — survives on the page at length.
Why we recommend it
Baldwin talking is its own genre
The essays are composed; this is Baldwin thinking at speed against a sparring partner half a generation younger, and the rhythm of his talk survives the transcription.
It is short and it moves
A single evening's conversation, readable in one sitting — the fastest route into both writers' preoccupations in the early 1970s.
Giovanni holds the floor
This is not an interview. She interrupts, disagrees, and wins exchanges — the book is a dialogue in fact as well as title.
What this book explores
Timeline
1971
Baldwin and Giovanni tape the conversation in London on 4 November for the television program Soul!; it airs on WNET in December.
1973
J. B. Lippincott publishes the transcript as A Dialogue, with a foreword by Ida Lewis and an afterword by Orde M. Coombs.
Book editions
- Hardcover
- J. B. Lippincott
- 1973
- 9780397009169
- Paperback
- J. B. Lippincott
- 1973
- 9780397009480
Reader reviews
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No Name in the Street
The long essay Baldwin published the following year, covering the same wounds in written prose.
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The Fire Next Time
The 1963 book whose arguments Giovanni tests him against, a generation on.
Read our takeA Dialogue: frequently asked questions
What is A Dialogue?
The published transcript of a conversation between the writers James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, taped in London on 4 November 1971 for the television program Soul! and published by J. B. Lippincott in 1973.
What do Baldwin and Giovanni talk about?
Black men and women, the church, rage and tenderness, the writer's responsibility, and America seen from a London studio — Baldwin from exile in France, Giovanni from the Black Arts generation coming up behind him.
Was the conversation broadcast?
Yes. It was taped for Soul!, the Black arts program on public television, and aired on WNET in December 1971. The book prints the exchange in full.
How long is it?
A single evening's conversation — the book reads in one sitting. It is the least demanding entry point into either writer's thinking from these years.
Who wrote the foreword and afterword?
The foreword is by Ida Lewis and the afterword by the essayist Orde M. Coombs. Both frame the conversation as a meeting of two generations of Black American writing.