James Baldwin: A Delicacy of Heart

When I moved out from America, I began to see it from a different perspective…

I can see now what happened to so many people who had perished around me and I could see that it was a political fact, a political disaster, and that I, myself, was in any case a political target; and menaced by forces which I had not seen as clearly when I was in America.

I also realized that to try to be a writer (which involves, after all, disturbing the peace) was political, whether one liked it or not; because if one is doing anything at all, one is trying to change the consciousness of other people. You're trying also to change your own consciousness. You have to use your consciousness, you have to trust it to the extent— enough to begin to talk; and you talk with the intention of beginning a ferment, beginning a disturbance in someone else's mind so that he sees the situation...

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen… Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.