Biographer David Leeming on James Baldwin’s Teaching

Notes from America with Kai Wright

In the seventh episode of “Notes on a Native Son" our guest is writer, philologist and James Baldwin biographer David Leeming.

In the biography, Leeming tells us that almost from the moment h e met Baldwin, he recognized that he was in the presence of a highly complex and driven individual, who was more intensely serious than anyone he had ever encountered.

It was in 1961, during Leeming’s time as head of English at the Robert College in Istanbul, that he first met Baldwin. Over the years, Leeming worked as an assistant to Baldwin, who gave him permission to take care of his papers. He tells host Razia Iqbal that he was at the author’s side during some of Baldwn’s liveliest years.

Leeming eventually became professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. He has written several books on comparative literature and mythology, as well as a biography of the painter Beauford Delaney, who Baldwin regarded as his spiritual father.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.