Below is the final paragraph of Anthony James Williams's review essay of the recent film I Am Not Your Negro, based on an unpublished essay by Baldwin.
I Am Not Your Negro is America’s opportunity to peek into Baldwin’s boudoir for the first, fifth, or fiftieth time. The author’s mission, to heal us from the ongoing perils of whiteness, is a message for all ages, nationalities, abilities, sexualities, races, ethnicities, and gender identities. Although Peck disappoints by prioritizing the FBI and generally downplaying the question of Baldwin’s sexuality, we have writers like Dagmawi Woubshet who have written extensively about such mistakes, pointing out that slack. We need more authors who force the audience to chew on what we have to say like it’s the gristle in their steak, and who also make us wrestle with our own responses. For me, Baldwin held up a daunting — if blurry — mirror that revealed the essayist, critic, and intellectual inside myself that I never knew existed. And I firmly believe that when Baldwin wrote that he thought “all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life,” he also meant for that to apply to how we tell our stories and define ourselves. I see myself as more than just a conduit for his political musings, a frame for his work, or a retreading of the past. The greatest effect the film can have is to get people to go back and read Baldwin, to reread and critique him, and to start on documenting their own narratives. There is no other way.
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