The 2001 teen film Save the Last Dance – an underwhelming story about a white ballet dancer in Chicago’s South Side – contains a surprisingly useful commentary on the legacy of the writer James Baldwin. In one scene, a high school teacher introduces the lead character, Sara, and her class to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. He calls it a work which ‘represents a complete turning point in American history and American literature’. Sara adds that it’s ‘a non-fiction novel’ and that Capote ‘created a new genre’. This initiates a classroom debate. ‘Capote wasn’t the first,’ says Derek, an African-American peer soon to become Sara’s love interest. ‘Richard Wright, James Baldwin did the same thing. Wasn’t nobody trying to read them though.’ ‘A lot of people read them,’ Sara replies. ‘A lot of people like who?’ Derek asks. ‘You?’

When Save the Last Dance came out, Baldwin had been dead for almost fifteen years and was little more than a footnote in the annals of American letters, an author known by many but read by few. Nearly a quarter of a century later, he is ubiquitous. But as Baldwin recognised in an essay on Sidney Poitier, fame puts you in ‘the interesting, delicate and terrifying position of being part of a system that you know you have to change’. Baldwin has become the patron saint of causes, but at what cost?

During the 1960s, Baldwin was one of the most recognisable American writers. His earnest-looking face graced the front cover of Time magazine in 1963, the year that he became a household name following the publication of his novel Another Country. During the early 1960s, he was celebrated for his non-fiction,