Guest host LeVar Burton presents a program celebrating the author he calls “potent and polemical.” First, Christopher Jackson reads Baldwin’s famous letter “My Dungeon Shook." Next, Anthony Rapp performs an excerpt from Giovanni's Room, in which an ex-pat comes to terms with his sexuality and loneliness in Paris. And Baldwin contemplates The Great Migration in his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. We hear an excerpt performed by Charlayne Woodard.
The program includes remarks by Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation.
Artists and Writers:
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a writer and civil rights activist. He wrote more than a dozen novels and essay collections, including Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and If Beale Street Could Talk. Baldwin’s work deals primarily with the social and cultural issues of being black and homosexual in America before and during the civil rights movement. His unfinished work, Remember This House, was adapted into the award-winning documentary I Am Not Your Negro in 2016, and a film adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk was released in 2018. Baldwin’s home on the Upper West Side was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places.
LeVar Burton is best known for his television work, most notably on the award-winning series Roots, Reading Rainbow, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Additional film and television credits include Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Ali, Community, The Big Bang Theory, Perception, and Weird City. He directed multiple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Charmed, Perception, NCIS: New Orleans, and the Disney Channel’s Smart House. Burton’s work has been honored with the Peabody Award and numerous Image and Emmy Awards, and a Grammy. He currently hosts the podcast LeVar Burton Reads.
Christopher Jackson is a Tony Award-nominated actor and Grammy and Emmy Award-winning songwriter and composer, best known for starring as George Washington in the musical Hamilton. He currently stars in the hit CBS drama Bull and is seen in the Netflix series When They See Us. He was also featured on the latest #Hamildrop hit “One Last Time (44 Remix)” alongside President Obama, and has performed sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center. Additional Broadway credits include Holla If Ya Hear Me, Bronx Bombers, After Midnight, In the Heights, Memphis, and The Lion King. Film and Television credits include Tracers, Afterlife, Freestyle Love Supreme on Pivot, The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, White Collar, Oz, Person of Interest, and Gossip Girl.
Lisa Lucas is the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as the publisher of Guernica, a non-profit online magazine focusing on writing that explores the intersection of art and politics with an international and diverse focus and as Director of Education at the Tribeca Film Institute. Lucas also serves on the literary council of the Brooklyn Book Festival.
Anthony Rapp was an original cast member in Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award-winning rock opera Rent, and later reprised the role in the 2005 film version and the 2009 Broadway Tour. Additional Broadway credits include You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation; and most recently, If/Then. He is also the author of the memoir Without You, which he adapted into a one-man show that toured the United States and London, England in 2012. His film and television credits include Adventures in Babysitting, School Ties, Dazed and Confused, A Beautiful Mind, The Knick, The Good Fight, 13 Reasons Why, and Star Trek: Discovery.
Charlayne Woodard is a two-time Obie Award winner for her work in In the Blood and The Witch of Edmonton. Her Broadway credits include Hair and Ain’t Misbehavin’, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. Off-Broadway, her numerous performances include Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; The Substance of Fire; WAR; Hamlet; and most recently, Daddy, for which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. As a playwright, her award-winning plays include Pretty Fire, Neat, In Real Life, The Night Watcher, and Flight. Woodard has been featured on film and television in Eye for an Eye, The Crucible, Unbreakable, Sunshine State, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, The Leftovers, The Blacklist, Glass, and currently, Sneaky Pete, Pose, and Prodigal Son.
