Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

In 1960, James Baldwin and Ingmar Bergman met in Stockholm for an interview for Esquire. Bergman was a prolific filmmaker of intimate films set in his home country of Sweden. Baldwin’s essay has two important take-aways. The first is his connection to Bergman’s background and his ability to connect with Bergman on the topic of strict, religious fathers. Baldwin’s own father was a minister and had a profound effect on him. Bergman looks back on his childhood and his experiences with his father with little thought. He expresses that he has moved on. Baldwin attributes this to the difference in their environments.

In Chapter 9, he suggests that every writer should make a point to connect his personal experience to the experiences of the reader. His ability to find a common thread with Bergman is indicative of his unique talent at finding patterns and making sense of them.

The author exhibits this quality further in the way he relates his interview with Bergman to America’s racial climate. Sitting with Bergman, a white filmmaker, in Sweden may not seem like it would directly correlate to the civil unrest of the 1960s United States. However, Baldwin recognizes Bergman’s fear of the Americanization of Stockholm as an indictment of American identity. For Bergman and others around the world, “Americanization” represents a shift toward materialism and violence, upending The Complexities of Identity in new ways. Baldwin asserts that America lacks identity, so the concern over Americanization is really a concern about a loss of identity.