Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

In this chapter, Baldwin responds to a memoir written by André Gide called Madeleine. Baldwin takes a dim view of Gide’s work, but he suggests that the egocentric nature of Madeleine is due to Gide’s personal pain.

Gide’s writing features two recurring motifs that speak to the conflict he experienced as a gay man and Protestant. Baldwin finds fault with Gide’s portrayal of gay men and suggests that society will never become inclusive of various sexualities. Baldwin also criticizes how Gide writes about his wife in Madeleine. Since Gide focuses so heavily on himself in the novel, she becomes the victim of his guilt and shame. Furthermore, his guilt over his sexual attraction to men inhibits his ability to treat his lovers with kindness or dignity. He fetishizes men from North Africa, which Baldwin attributes to Gide’s racist sentimentality: “It is not necessary to despite people who are one’s inferiors—whose inferiority, by the way, is amply demonstrated by the fact that they appear to relish, without guilt, their sensuality” (160). However, Baldwin acknowledges what Gide faces. He argues that gay men during this period are forced to live in isolation, separated from love and friendship. In the novel, Gide clings to his wife to avoid this fate.

Baldwin closes by explaining that both gay and straight men have the same problem with women. Neither can reach them. Baldwin argues that men are in a prison of their own making, and their inability to love women keeps them in eternal isolation. Their failure to love and connect with women also inhibits them from loving and connecting with one another.