Creating community in James Baldwin’s footsteps
At the International Conference on James Baldwin, resurrected after a six-year hiatus, writer-activist Max S. Gordon encouraged the room of predominantly Black people who’d traveled to the French Riviera, some crossing the Atlantic for the first time, recreating Baldwin’s 1948 departure from racist, homophobic America, “to Baldwin each other.” The frescoed, wood-paneled ampitheatre of Mediterranean University Center, which faces the sea, echoed with chuckles at Gordon’s invitation to approach each other with Baldwin-like curiosity. Just moments before, the air hummed with Baldwin’s words, as performance artist Gabrielle Civil had us recite favorite quotations simultaneously to demonstrate that “Baldwin was not a single story; there were many Baldwins.”
These diverse Baldwins drew a diverse group to the Côte d’Azur, where he spent his last seventeen years. Over the weekend I met and “Baldwinned” old friends, other writers, students, scholars, artists, activists, father-daughter and mother-son travelers. Friday evening we spilled into the Promenade des Anglais, a wide boulevard that runs along Nice’s four-mile-long beachfront, in search of eateries with white umbrellas and beach chairs or DJs spinning old-school R&B. Our favorite spot was lined in pink and white rhododendrons down to the water, where families and puppies frolicked in the Mediterranean past sunset. There, Aperol Spritzes in hand, we watched elderly couples leathery from years of sunbathing, young men trying dance moves and women in white lace dresses.
Saturday morning chartered buses to Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the famous artists’ village where Baldwin settled, met us at a jagged monument to repatriated colonists after Algeria’s bitter independence war. Negotiating highway construction and apartment complexes, it was hard to imagine Baldwin’s 1970 journey, or why Saint-Paul-de-Vence (population 300) is France’s second-most visited village, attracting two million annual visitors. I chatted with a sister who’d exchanged her U.S. citizenship for Swiss and discovered that we shared friends in Helsinki and California. As the medieval fortress materialized on the mountainside, the bus fell silent, except for the click of phones’ cameras. We piled off and headed uphill, past the sprawling Café de la Place and pétanque pitch, where villagers bowl steel balls, into narrow cobbled streets of art galleries, boutiques and fine restaurants. The scent of fresh croissants and café plumed the morning air. Once fortified, we joined a panel of four female poets inspired by Baldwin’s iconic 1953 essay, “Stranger in the Village.” The packed room erupted into lively debate over the privileges American travelers enjoy, compared to the daily lives of Black expats, Afro-Europeans and African and Caribbean immigrants.
“Travel is not free,” Philadelphia Poet Laureate Airea D. Matthews commented on life outside American perspectives, “but it is freedom.”
Sadly, the villa where Baldwin penned many books, including If Beale Street Could Talk, and hosted friends Nina Simone, Josephine Baker, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Miles Davis, and Ray Charles, was recently demolished by a luxury condo developer. What matters, however, is that Baldwin’s words and example as a global citizen endure.
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it,” he predicted, and for two days, we found it.
Faith Adiele founded the nation’s first writing workshop for travelers of color through VONA. Her award-winning memoir Meeting Faith routinely makes travel listicles, and her travel media credits include A World of Calm (HBO-Max), Sleep Stories (CALM app), and My Journey Home (PBS). A member of the Black Travel Alliance, she publishes in Here Magazine, Off Assignment, Best Women’s Travel Writing, Oprah Magazine, ESSENCE, and others. Find her in Oakland, Finland, Nigeria or @meetingfaith.
This story was originally published July 4, 2022 at 9:00 AM.