I Tried To Live Like James Baldwin and FAILED... Here's Why.

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

Thanks for watching! Let me know what you want to see next on this channel ❤

[@NicoRaimont]

13:03 - 13:33 is FACTS! Succesful Event planning is 100% based on host+attendee trust, host financial stability, attendee comfort and host transparency. Of those 4 things, this event sounds like it had……..……an event.

[@selenas5415]

Thanks for sharing the story!!! It's especially messed up they didn't have your stipend money ready, especially when you were expecting it to be a funded residency. Her team also should have put together a quick PDF telling residents where everything is and what the emergency numbers are. I wonder how his family felt/feels about how Sharon is running the residency. I've seen them interact with the residency account on social media.

[@peypeyyy96]

You came across my recommendation! I'm transforming in a sense and growing out of the shallow areas of social media/KZbin (but also still allowing some of it in small doses). I loved this video so much! My mother is older (67) and introduced me to writers and creatives like Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Zora, Langston, Gil Scott Heron, etc. at age 8. I've always had a natural ability for creative writing. It took a while to appreciate their work as it was too advanced in retrospect. It was only until my bubble popped as a teen starting with Trayvon Martin and attending a PWI later on, that i began to understand. I did fall into too much of "let's party/get lit" to combat how I felt very dissatisfied/sick with the world, which started to feel monotonous after a while. All this (oversharing lol) to say is I'm glad I'm returning and getting inspired, and I'm coming across content like yours that feels more aligned and bringing me back to who I was always trying to be :)

[@NicoRaimont]

Thank you for sharing. As a writer who has done a couple residencies, this sounds like a shady nightmare.

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

It was a wild time

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

Thank you for Watching

[@bmoreyowzers]

Im only 4 mins in and when you mentioned feeling plopped down into fantasy, i couldnt unsee or unhear baldwin’s essay “stranger in a village”. If you or anyone havent read it yet, i urge you. Here, be dragons!

[@NebraskaFalls-ee7qp]

James Baldwin, Nat Turner and Zora Hurston are my inspirations !

[@divinesarah]

It's so poignant you finding this place. Pimping out creative legacies is big business but I find it a bit vampiric and soulless. You could go back in the future in a leadership role.

[@Lee30000]

Thank you for sharing this video. I'm not in academia and I'm probably a bit of a romanticizer of Baldwin. If you have access to a lot of archival footage of Baldwin, there's one clip that was in I think "The Price of the Ticket" where a reporter asks a stupid question something like, "Does everything you write have to have meaning?" James Baldwin tries to answer and ends with, "... but I'm not going to just sit in an ivory tower cultivating my talent?" I keep hoping someone will post that clip since there seems to be a Baldwin resurgence going on, but no luck so far. It's one of my favorites. I probably should say this on the other video you made about Billy Porter that I agree with your point about the irony of Baldwin taking his Malcolm X script away from Hollywood to prevent an antiseptic safe redux Malcolm X biographic film; and now people are fighting the same fight about a Baldwin bio-pic for a similar reason. But I'm liking your other video here. Protocol is not one of my fortes.

[@kalka1l]

Perhaps you seek this quote: What makes it difficult to write? BALDWIN: Well, there are so many other demands which have to be met. There is no way to sit in an ivory tower. by kalamu ya salaam First published in THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Dec./Jan. 1979

[@NebraskaFalls-ee7qp]

WE NEED TO GET BILLY PORTER OFF THAT PROJECT

[@limerencevictim]

youre making great content

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

Thank you

[@tayyibsmith]

looking forward to reading your book.

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it

[@shannoncain4737]

Hi Prince, I’ve been the target of nonsense like this pretty consistently since 2016, but your video gives me a new opportunity. For the first time, this baloney is being lobbed at me when I’m no longer affiliated with La Maison Baldwin. I never responded externally to the similar tirades against me over the years for the simple reason that I needed to protect the nonprofit organization I founded. I handled these moments internally, communicating with my advisory board and other community members to whom I was directly accountable, resisting the urge to give these moments any more attention by defending myself in public. You’ll recall, Prince, the blowup in 2021, when a different former resident made the same unfounded accusations. You were on that email thread. You’ll also recall that effort went nowhere after the other Baldwin Fellows refused to follow his lead. Now I’m no longer responsible for the organization, as it continues on robustly under new leadership. Which means I can finally call bullshit on these accusations. Here, then, an accounting of the inaccuracies and outright lies in your video: - Nobody was double charged for the Baldwin conference. How dare you. Give me their names. I personally handled every single financial transaction for this event. Exactly nobody came to me afterwards to say they’d been charged twice. I will gladly dig out my old spreadsheets if anyone has a question about this. If some error was made, I’ll send them a refund from my personal bank account. - I didn’t fucking run around asking people for booze money, jesus christ. As per the registration materials sent in advance, each person was asked to put 20 euros in an envelope when they checked in, so that we could cover the cost of one beverage per person at the restaurants where our conference sessions were being held: the deal we struck with local business owners to use their dining rooms for free. If that’s what you’re referring to, sounds like you participated in a jolly old game of telephone tag. Good lord, get your facts straight. - Speaking of facts: this wasn’t a writer’s conference, it was an academic conference. The eighth in a series of International Conferences on James Baldwin, which started at Howard University in 2000. And the cost wasn’t “thousands of dollars,” it was four hundred bucks. Seriously, Prince, did you even read the website? - As for why you were running around making sure people had water: well, that’s because you agreed--as part of your residency award--to one day of community engagement in the form of hosting an open house. (Not the open mic, ahem: the emcee, as you’ll recall, was our board chair, your event co-host.) Your job was simply to greet people for a couple of hours and show them around the cottage. And maybe give them a glass of water. Where was I during all of this? Running around making sure other people had water. I didn’t go down to the cottage to check on people because you were the host. I assumed you knew where the faucet was. Remember all those extra glasses on the top shelf in the cottage? Those are for events. - The attendee who blew up at me after the final event was upset after discovering that the Baldwin family hadn’t endorsed the conference. She was screaming, so I was led away by BIPOC elders--including my board chair--and advised to stay inside and let others handle it. I regret following their advice. I should have gone outside and talked to her myself. -Your stipend payments kept getting delayed because of banking issues on your end, remember? Remember also how because I was so anxious to make sure you got your money that I overpaid you? Remember how I had to remind you three times to return the extra funds? As for the inadequacies of the residency, I am sorry and I accept responsibility. It turns out that my volunteer on the ground wasn’t doing the job I was told they were doing. That’s my fault entirely. I do wish you’d mentioned the conversation you and I had that day during the conference, when we sat on the low stone wall outside Cafe de la Place and I apologized to you for these shortcomings, especially the laundry issue. I said I was disappointed that we’d screwed up, that your residency hadn’t met my personal standards nor those of the organization. I do wish you’d mentioned your silence during that apology, and your refusal to meet my eye. Shannon

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

Wow..you seem tired and white and a little too concerned with yourself, and not how Black people were treated. Says a lot about your white mediocrity

[@PrinceShakurYoutube]

AND YOU'RE CURSING?1 thats rascist

[@azabachezapata6816]

love your insights Prince! 🤎

[@paulomilan515]

I swear I replayed you coming out of that water entirely too much. And they said black makes things look smaller.... 👀