Stowe Prize winner discusses the legacies of Baldwin and Stowe
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the Princeton professor of African American studies and frequent guest on political talk shows, accepted his 2021 Stowe Prize from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center on Thursday night but you can watch it online through Oct. 10.
The virtual Stowe Prize presentation was livestreamed and it’s free to watch, though donations to the Stowe Center are encouraged.
Glaude was awarded the prize for his book “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.” He traveled to Hartford for the event, which features an interview with Glaude, sparked by items from the Stowe Center’s vast collection of artifacts associated with Stowe and her work (especially her anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”).
Glaude’s book is about 20th century novelist/ playwright/essayist James Baldwin and how his views on racism, protest and progressive politics resonate today as much as they did in his own time. But the talk often touches on Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In Baldwin’s famous essay “Everybody’s
Protest Novel” (written in 1949 when he was in his mid-20s) savaged “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as “a very bad novel.” Glaude tells Ogbar and Burgess that Baldwin was “relentless in his criticism of Stowe’s novel, for its sentimentality.”
Beyond the Stowe Prize award talk Thursday night, Glaude contributed music from his personal record collection to a sound installation outside the center’s front entrance and its carriage house, created by local DJ Qiana Coachman-Strickland. The soundscape also included music from Baldwin’s record collection and recordings from sheet music owned by Stowe.
The Courant spoke to Glaude by phone Friday, the morning after the Stowe Prize event.
It was refreshing that the center allowed for open criticism of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — its racial stereotypes and problems as a novel.
When I found out my book had been selected for the Stowe Prize, I noted the irony, with Baldwin’s trenchant criticism of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” They have an understanding of history at the Stowe Center, of the magnitude of Harriet Beecher Stowe and of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” including all their faults. Even the good people are complicated.
Your book is so focused, providing a full biography of James Baldwin and using his writings to connect to present-day issues. You must have been tempted to bring in other writers, or go off in other directions.
I had to figure out the form for what I was trying to do. I had to find a form that could be historical biography, but also about the moment. I had wanted to write an intellectual biography of James Baldwin, but so much of his writing can’t be quoted,
and has been embargoed for 30 years, so that wouldn’t work.
I realized that he was in despair, and I wanted to draw on how he used his resources, because the last few years have been a time of despair.
It was hard. The first time I tried it, the editor didn’t get it. My colleagues said it was messy. Then when I wrote the introduction, they got it.
You’re fearless about injecting yourself into the book, using the first person.
I remember first trying to write it. The prose
wasn’t interesting. It was too clean. I realized ‘if we do this together, you have to deal with you.’ I had to be present.
You argue that Baldwin’s writings are as valid today as in his own time. More valid, perhaps.
James Baldwin was prophetic. When most people felt he’d lost his step, when his writing isn’t as robust, as clean, those works are undervalued. He’s grappling with betrayal. The country has claimed Reagan as its savior. In Black America, this is the age of the Cosby
sweater. Baldwin is saying ‘What the hell?!’
You make a case for later Baldwin works being essential.
“No Name in the Street” is vital, and “Evidence of Things Not Seen.” I would also recommend we return to “Notes of a Native Son,” his first book of essays.
For details on the Stowe Prize and the livestream
(up through Oct. 10) of the award presentation, see harrietbeecherstowecenter. org/sp2021.