James Baldwin's A Stranger In The Village

James Baldwin was an African American novelist born in 1924, and passed away in 1987. He wrote about racial, social, and class distinctions, during an important time of history when these topics were finally being more widely discussed. Though he is an African-American writer, one may think Baldwin specifically wrote about racial, social, and class distinctions in solely America, but he actually travels over the world to tackle these issues. One of his works that covers those issues abroad is A Stranger in The Village, a short story about Baldwin’s time in a very small, sheltered, and predominantly white community up in the mountains of Switzerland. The people of this village treat him differently because he is an outsider, and they especially treat Baldwin differently because he is an outsider with a look …show more content…
He wants to be his own person, to be accepted for he is unconditionally. He is always friendly with the villagers and smiles at them, even despite the villagers’ curiosity, amusement, prejudice, and even that weird thing of “buying” Africans to convert them to Christianity. Baldwin struggles with this though, for he feels as if he is trapped. On page forty-four Baldwin says, “...I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people’s whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish in rage more than they will ever know.” Baldwin wishes that he didn’t have to be the one to represent diversity in other places. He wishes that the white men before his time (and even now) didn’t create this pain he is forced to feel now. This is especially prevalent in America, but not so much in the village. In the village, he is a complete stranger, with a chance of being accepted for who he is despite first being a sight to see. There is not a clear history of deep rooted racism and prejudice in the Swiss village like there is in the United