James Baldwin
Lesson plans and other teaching resources

|Biography and Background| |Writing|

Biography and Background

James Baldwin
Biography at Wikipedia.

American Masters - James Baldwin
Biography.

A Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials
The Library of Congress presents a variety of materials on James Baldwin and other Harlem Renaissance artists.

Writing

The Expanding Canon: James Baldwin
Snyopses of The Fire Next Time, "Sonny's Blues," and "The Rockpile." In this lesson students work in small groups to research James Baldwin on the Internet, choose a focus related to one of the three works, and create a Web site about Baldwin.

The Fire Next Time and Nobody Knows My Name
Support materials with emphasis on structure and thene. Scroll down to find suggestions for comparison/contrast of the two works.

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
This site offers a summary, theme openers, crosscurricular activities, research assignments, and suggestions for related reading.

Go Tell it on the Mountain: Context
Biographical information from SparkNotes.

Learning to View Literature Instruction with Literary Lenses: Additional Lesson Plans
Part of this article describes a lesson using Baldwin's "The Rockpile." Adobe Reader required for access.

"My Dungeon Shook"
The analysis portion of this lesson focuses on Baldwin's use of parallelism. The writing task emphasizes personal narrative.