The following sample meeting plans are meant to help Baldwin Circles conveners get started. Feel free to share them with your group, as a way of launching a discussion of the group’s interests and concerns. Remember, you don’t need a theme – your group can choose what you’d like to read. Each reading circle is encouraged to explore Baldwin in different formats – books, plays, essays, poems, films, articles about Baldwin, etc.
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Religion
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind"
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, Just Above My Head
Meeting 4: James Baldwin, “The Outing”
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Theater
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, The Amen Corner
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, “Theatre: The Negro In and Out”
Meeting 4: E Patrick Johnson, “Baldwin’s Theater”
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Strangers
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Meeting 1: Albert Camus, The Stranger
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village”
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, “Many Thousands Gone”
Meeting 4: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room -
On Sexuality
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Meeting 4: James Baldwin, “The Male Prison”
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Civil Rights Movement
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, “The Hard Kind of Courage” or “A Fly in Buttermilk”
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, “A Letter from the South: Nobody Knows My Name”
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, No Name in the Street
Meeting 4: Raoul Peck, I Am Not Your Negro
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Baldwin as Literary Critic
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “Many Thousands Gone,” “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough”
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, “Faulkner and Desegregation”
Meeting 3: Douglas Field, “james baldwin and the art of reviewing”
Meeting 4: Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
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Baldwin in Conversation
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni on WNET’s “SOUL!"
Meeting 2: James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, Conversation with a Native Son on WNET’s Assignment America
Meeting 3: James Baldwin and Margaret Mead, A Rap on Race, YouTube
Meeting 4: James Baldwin and Dr. Kenneth Clark, GBH OpenVault
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Collaborative genre experiments
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Meeting 1: “Nothing Personal,” a photographic essay with Richard Avedon
Meeting 2:Little Man Little Man, a children’s book with Koran Cazac
Meeting 3:Native Sons, a memoir by Sol Stein with letters, a short story, and a play by Baldwin
Meeting 4:“I am Not Your Negro,” a film directed by Raoul Peck based on Baldwin’s manuscript
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Baldwin in France
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Meeting 1: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Meeting 2: James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son”
Meeting 3: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Meeting 4: Ellery Washington, “James Baldwin’s Paris”