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“Native Sons and Daughters: Baldwin, Blackness, and Being in America” - A Talk and Discussion with Kevin Quinn '01
Wednesday, February 16, 2022, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EDT
Category: Events

 

 

 Yale Club of DC Virtual Event

Co-sponsored with the Yale Black Alumni Association DMV, Yale GALA DMV, and the Yale Club of San Francisco

 

Native Sons and Daughters:
Baldwin, Blackness, and Being in America” - 
A Talk and Discussion with Kevin Quinn '01

 

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

7:00-8:30pm


This meeting will be conducted on Zoom.  Instructions will be provided upon registration

This talk and discussion will be a close look at James Baldwin's first published collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).  Impressive foremost for its range of insight and keen understanding of the Black experience in America, this book introduced Baldwin as the inimitable voice of "bearing witness" for which he is now widely known.  Charting his early life living abroad in Paris and Switzerland, as well as his upbringing in Harlem, the collection elevates the biographical essay in its fierce literary artistry and stylistic perfection so that what is personal is indeed that which is universal.  The collection also showcases Baldwin as literary critic, giving early insight into his convictions about what fiction can and should do.  We will pay particular attention to "Stranger in the Village" though we will briefly touch on each essay in the entire collection.


About the Speaker

Kevin Quinn is a writer, teacher, and critic.  He received his BA in English from Yale in 2001, writing his thesis on Baldwin (Baldwin's Blues: The Narrative of Vulnerability and the Rhetoric of Dreams Deferred). He has written for Politico Magazine and is a regular reviewer for the South China Morning Post Magazine in Hong Kong.  He is also a contributor to the new magazine Citizen, a bi-annual journal of Black art and culture.  He lived and taught for many years in Hong Kong and is now based in San Francisco.  Last June Kevin also spoke to our Club in an event co-sponsored with the Yale Club of San Francisco and the Yale Black Alumni Association on the topic, “A Mattered Black Life, Yale and Beyond”.


Support the Yale Club of Washington, DC

The Yale Club of Washington, DC offers this event to our members and alumni.  However, we do ask for your support in one or both of the following ways: 

1)      Please become a member if you are not one already

2)      Donate to the Yale Club of Washington, DC (see option on registration page). 

Membership dues and donations are both critical income sources for the Club, which enable Club operations, programs, and financial viability.

       

Contact: Chip Seward - [email protected]