James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York, NY. His mother left his father because of his father’s drug abuse; she remarried. Baldwin’s stepfather, a Baptist preacher, is who Baldwin refers to as his father throughout his writings. Baldwin had eight younger siblings, whom he spent a lot of time taking care of throughout his childhood. Baldwin would later write in the Autobiographical Notes to the 1984 Beacon Press edition of Notes of a Native Son, “The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the observation that I would certainly not consider living it again” (3). From about age 14 to age 17, Baldwin preached in the Pentecostal church. But his view of religion soured, and he left the church, writing much later that he had turned to religion to deal with his personal crises. Foremost among these issues was his relationship to his stepfather. At age 18 he left home for good.

Baldwin had begun writing by age 10, and in his early teens, he found his way to Greenwich Village, where he would meet artists like Beauford Delaney. By his early twenties, Baldwin had made his way to Paris, where he would spend the first part of his writing career.