The Devil Finds Work

James Baldwin was deeply concerned with cinema and its culture, particularly its power to define and affirm dominant cultural ideologies — with all their racism, stereotypes, and hierarchies.
In this book, The Devil Finds Work, Baldwin analyzes his collection of late essays, recording his reflections and readings on cinema, its position, and its impact on his life — while deconstructing the racial structures embedded in Hollywood films, much like Edward Said’s deconstruction of Orientalist frameworks in Western literature and art.

Essam Zakaria

Themes of race, film, and truth circle around one another throughout this book, as Baldwin seeks to reconcile the cinema he loves — that inspired so many of his dreams — with the unforgettable reality of American life he describes. Baldwin meditates on the films that shaped his consciousness and on the ways in which most Americans allowed themselves to live within the illusion of the American dream, creating imagined national identities detached from reality.

Noah Berlatsky

I cannot tell whether my analysis of The Devil Finds Work is accurate so much as it is astonished — astonished by the essay’s mesmerizing expansiveness. I find myself wandering away at times, only to realize that the text itself leads me much farther than I had expected.

Claire MacBride