Sidney Poitier
- Actor
Depicts
The collection includes Baldwin's 1968 Look profile of Sidney Poitier — his portrait of the most famous Black actor in Hollywood at the height of his stardom, and a prelude to the film criticism of The Devil Finds Work.
The Cross of Redemption
Everything James Baldwin published and never put in a book, gathered twenty-three years after he died: reviews from his early twenties, speeches, open letters, and one short story.
- 2010
- 308
About James Baldwin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA posthumous collection, edited by the novelist Randall Kenan and published by Pantheon in 2010. It gathers Baldwin's occasional writing from the 1940s to the 1980s — the book reviews he wrote in his early twenties, essays and speeches, two profiles, six public letters, five forewords written for other people's books, and "The Death of a Prophet", a short story from 1950. None of it had appeared in any of his own volumes.
The story, in more detail
Baldwin assembled his own non-fiction in 1985 as The Price of the Ticket, and that book plus the five essay collections it reprints account for the work he wanted kept. This is the remainder: pieces written to a deadline, for a magazine or a podium, and then left where they were published.
The reviews are the surprise. Baldwin was reviewing books in his early twenties, before Go Tell It on the Mountain, and the voice is already the voice — impatient, unwilling to grant a book its own premises, and much funnier than the later essays let themselves be.
"The Death of a Prophet", from 1950, is the only fiction in the volume. It is a fragment of the material that became his first novel, and the only place to read it.
Randall Kenan, who edited it, was a novelist and a Baldwin scholar. He died in 2020.
Why we recommend it
The early reviews
Baldwin at twenty-two, reviewing other people's novels for money, already refusing to be polite. Nothing else in the shelf shows him this unguarded.
It is the only place for the 1950 story
"The Death of a Prophet" has never been collected anywhere else.
It completes the non-fiction
The Price of the Ticket is Baldwin's own selection and stops at 1985. Between the two books, the essays are effectively all in print.
What this book explores
Real people in this book
Timeline
1947
Baldwin, in his early twenties, is publishing book reviews in New York magazines. Several are collected here.
1950
"The Death of a Prophet" appears, three years before his first novel.
1985
Baldwin publishes The Price of the Ticket, his own selection of thirty-seven years of non-fiction.
1987
Baldwin dies at Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
2010
Pantheon publishes The Cross of Redemption, edited by Randall Kenan, gathering what none of the earlier books held.
Book editions
- Hardcover
- Pantheon Books
- 2010
- 9780307378828
- Paperback
- Vintage International
- 2011
- 9780307275967
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Price of the Ticket
Baldwin's own gathering of his non-fiction, which this volume is the complement to.
Read our take
Notes of a Native Son
The first collection, and where the reviewing voice in this book was heading.
Read our take
Go Tell It on the Mountain
The novel that grew out of the same material as "The Death of a Prophet", the one story here.
Read our takeThe Cross of Redemption: frequently asked questions
What is The Cross of Redemption?
A posthumous collection of James Baldwin's uncollected writing, published in 2010 and edited by the novelist Randall Kenan. It gathers essays, speeches, two profiles, six public letters, five forewords, more than a dozen book reviews and one short story, written between the 1940s and the 1980s and never included in any of Baldwin's own books.
Is any of it new material?
All of it had been published somewhere — in magazines, as speeches, or as introductions to other writers' books. What is new is that it had never been collected. Baldwin died in 1987 and had no hand in this volume.
How is it different from The Price of the Ticket?
The Price of the Ticket, published in 1985, is Baldwin's own selection of his non-fiction and reprints five of his essay collections in full. This book is the material that selection left out, including his earliest reviews and work written after 1985.
Does it contain fiction?
One story, "The Death of a Prophet", from 1950. It draws on the same Harlem church material as Go Tell It on the Mountain and is not collected anywhere else.
Who was Randall Kenan?
An American novelist and a scholar of Baldwin's work, who selected and arranged the contents of this volume. He died in 2020.
Is it a good place to start?
No. It is a book for readers who already know the voice, because much of it is occasional work written fast. Start with The Fire Next Time or Notes of a Native Son.