James Baldwin's Essay Stranger In The Village

James Baldwins “Stranger in the Village” is an essay that accounts for his first visit to Leukerbad, Switzerland in 1951. The virtually unknown village (which was called Loèche-Les-Bains), was lodged deep within the mountains but occupied by many physically disabled individuals (whom Baldwin referred to as “cripples”), who looked to hot spring water for healing (Newyorker). They all felt that bathing in the water would heal them. James Baldwin was very popular throughout the village, so his whereabouts were not inaccessible, to say the least. He stayed in a chattel with his friend (later deemed an intimate partner), Lucien Happersberger’s, family. However, Baldwin still felt like a “stranger” despite his familial ties. Further, his estrangement

Unlike the isolation and alienation that he felt in America, the lonesomeness that he felt in Switzerland surpassed it tremendously. Plus, although he was well known in Switzerland, it wasn’t because of his familial ties, rather it was because of his physical features. He was treated as a walking exhibit. And though it would have been easier to blame such humiliation on the locals themselves, he instead opted to show how such events were a direct result of European “innocence.” The misconceptions that white Americans have possessed with regards to the integration of Blacks was essentially deemed impossible by Baldwin. He used his essay to assure whites and Negroes alike that "This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again" (Bookbuilder, pp.18). The concept of adapting European innocence in American has proven to be problematic. Reasons being, it has created a false reality of American Culture, it has provided an unachievable sense of power which fosters ignorance and naivety towards non-whites, and it has led to the ongoing oppression, inferiority, and terrorization of African