Lit Fest Brings Baldwin’s Legacy To Life

Inspired by James Baldwin’s commitment to telling the truth, Jacqueline Brown raised her hand to ask a question of the two literature scholars in front of her.

“In your personal experience, how has his work taught you to find joy? How has his work incited you towards action?”

Jacqueline popped those questions Saturday afternoon during a panel discussion called ​“The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” held in a second-floor meeting room at ConnCAT’s headquarters at 4 Science Park.

The panel was part of the fifth annual Kulturally LIT Fest, a locally run literature festival founded by IfeMichelle Gardin. This year’s fest focused on James Baldwin’s life and work in honor of the centenary of the great American author’s birth. The daylong event featured panelists and scholars from institutions like Howard University, Brown University, Virginia Tech, Yale and University of Connecticut.

University of Connecticut Associate Professor Shawn Salvant and Yale University Professor Roderick Ferguson led the panel about Baldwin and the artist’s integrity, dissecting Baldwin’s work and its many themes from artistry to civic engagement in front of a crowd of over 20 attendees.

In response to Brown’s questions, Salvant turned directly to the words of Baldwin himself, quoting a passage from The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings. That quotation read: ​“And not only do we all know how difficult it is, given what we are, to tell the difference between right and wrong, but the whole nature of life is so terrible that somebody’s right is always somebody else’s wrong. And these are the terrible choices one has always got to make.” 

“You read things because you want to understand your current world today,” Salvant said. ​“And so, when I teach Baldwin, the title of my course is ​‘James Baldwin Now’ because what I do when I teach Baldwin is to help use Baldwin as a lens to better understand some of the challenges and conflicts and issues going on today. I’m always going to link these things to present and current issues.”

With a stack of papers and articles on the desk before him, John McCann sat attentively in the back of the room for the artist’s integrity panel. After hearing Ferguson’s response about how Baldwin had motivated his intellectual and civic work, McCann shot his hand up, eager to add his input.

“I think the comment was made about [how] the artist’s integrity and courage depends on what human beings believe to be real,” he said. That reminded him of the current political moment; he said that one of the key dangers presented by former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is that they have ​“confuse[d] in people’s minds what is real.” 

McCann has worked as a reference librarian at Albertus Magnus College for more than 30 years. He spoke out on Saturday against political moves to suppress information, and described poets as ​“the truth tellers in our society.” He contrasted Baldwin’s theme of truth-telling to book bans in schools across Florida.

“You have libraries and librarians under attack in many areas of our country, and…some of the political forces in our country do not want people exposed to what the truth is,” he said in an interview after the panel.

McCann is also part of the 100 Years of Baldwin Book Club, which meets on the third Thursday of every month at Possible Futures bookstore. He was inspired to join Kulturally LIT on Saturday because of his participation in the book club. 

“I didn’t know too much about Baldwin, and it has really opened my eyes because we have been reading his fiction, his poetry, his essays, and I’ve really grown to appreciate his importance as a major American writer,” he said. After hearing Saturday’s panel, he hopes to increase the number of Baldwin’s works in the collection developments at Albertus. He also hopes to bolster the school’s collection of African American literature. 

A long-time resident of New Haven, Jacqueline Brown served as moderator for the panelists on Saturday. 

Like McCann, Jacqueline was also a newcomer to the LIT fest and spoke about how the discussion made her see her work in a new light. Brown is an actor, writer, and producer. She is currently directing a short film series called HAVENtheseries.

“The two gentlemen talked about [how] the artist’s job is to show others how to survive, and the artist’s job is to inspire people to action,” she said. She said that, as a writer, she previously thought of her art as a way ​“expressing feelings.” Now, she said, to ​“hear that one of Baldwin’s driving forces was to ignite action makes me want to go back to my writing and say, ​‘How am I inspiring people with what I’m writing?’” 

Outside of 4 Science Park, Halima Flynn and Gracy Brown continued to discuss the panel. After being unable to attend Kulturally LIT in previous years, the duo knew they had to make it out this year and experience it for the first time, attributing their attendance to the effort of IfeMichelle Gardin, the festival’s founder. 

“A film I did is accepting an award today and I’m not there, because I was like, ​‘I got plans. I told Ife I was gonna be here,’” Flynn said. 

“Ife is community, you know what I mean?” Gracy added. ​“I’ve known Ife for at least 30 years … and I too have not been to an event.”

She continued, ​“I knew that once I got here, I would feel better about whatever the heck was going on in my life. And from the moment I got out of the car, that’s what I was met with: just kindness and community.”

Both women said they showed up to Saturday’s fest in part to educate themselves on Black history and to explore the breadth of Black literature, something that they said was not taught in schools when they were kids. 

Flynn, who is also a part of the Baldwin book club at Possible Futures, pulled out her phone to show her copy of If Beale Street Could Talk, which the club will be talking about later this month. At only 24 pages into the 140 page book, Flynn said that she enjoyed the text, but also mentioned the difficulties reading Baldwin and the frustration of seeing social issues he discussed years ago still being unresolved today.

“There’s something visceral about the way he writes that touches us,” she said. ​“Baldwin is just really, really honest.”

As an artist and actor, Gracy said that she hopes to apply the lessons to her work

That resolve led her to Possible Futures’ tent at the festival, where Kay Anderson and neighborhood volunteer and materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez guided her with suggestions. In the end, Gracy secured two copies of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time: one for her and one for this reporter. 

Before heading to her car, she couldn’t help but leave with a challenge.

“Next time we see each other we need to compare notes,” she said, holding up her new book.