Mattia Ferraro Wins Graduate Student Essay Award by James Baldwin Review
Mattia Ferraro, a PhD candidate in English at UNINE, has received the 2026 Graduate Student Essay Award from the James Baldwin Review for his article “James Baldwin in Switzerland: Love, Artistic Becoming, and the Geography of Black Identity”.
Switzerland is where James Baldwin finished his debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), after more than a decade of work. The essay argues that his experience as a “stranger” in an Alpine village both unlocked his writing and sharpened his critique of American racial dynamics. There, Baldwin turned his estrangement into a way of seeing: the distance Switzerland offered allowed him to view himself, Europe, and America differently.
You can read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.7227/JBR.12.6
Abstract
This study explores James Baldwin’s visits to Switzerland between 1951 and 1986, examining how these sojourns profoundly influenced his life and literary output. Works such as Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Amen Corner, “Stranger in the Village,” and The Fire Next Time, among the most important novels, plays, essays, and nonfiction pieces of Baldwin’s entire oeuvre, all found some degree of influence in the Swiss Alps of the Valais. Central to this Swiss connection was Baldwin’s relationship with the painter Lucien Happersberger, whom Baldwin considered “the love of my life.” Building on previous scholarship on Baldwin’s transatlantic associations with France and Turkey, this article demonstrates how Switzerland served as a transformative space where Baldwin reconciled with his racial identity and overcame a long-lasting creative paralysis. By bringing biographical and critical perspectives into dialogue, and drawing on rare archival material as well as original sources made accessible through translation, this study offers the first comprehensive account of Baldwin’s Swiss years.