Kevin Young on James Baldwin's "Letter from a Region in My Mind"

The reputation of the writer James Baldwin rose and fell during his lifetime, but since his death, in 1987, his star has only ascended.

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After decamping for Europe, in his twenties, with a one-way ticket and forty dollars, Baldwin quickly wrote himself into the firmament with "Notes of a Native Son," his 1955 nonfiction début, whose essays announced a brave and unconstrained new voice. "I love America more than any other country in the world," he declared, "and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

Baldwin would exercise that right to sweeping effect, seven years later, with "Letter from a Region in My Mind," which appeared in The New Yorker in the fall of 1962. Republished a few months later in "The Fire Next Time," the essay served as a definitive diagnosis of American race relations.