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she was soft in a deadly, scary way

Un jour idéal by Thierry Fontaine, 2015

Maya Angelou: When you leave your house in France, and come to the United States -- when you leave your adopted home and come to your real home, what kind of response do you have, inside yourself?

James Baldwin: I miss my family. I miss uh...a lot of people, you know, who are part of me. You know?

Angelou: Keep you alive. Yes.

Baldwin: And a certain kind of speed, energy, beat -- which only Americans, only American Black people, have. Y'know? I miss that. When you say my home, it's not exactly my home. It's a kind of asylum. It's a place where I can work. I have a lot of work to do. And...if you are in a situation where you're always resisting and resenting, it's very hard to...

Angelou: Takes too much energy.

Baldwin: Well, you can't write a book.

Angelou: No.

Baldwin: You can't write a sentence. I asked my brother David -- we were driving through, we were driving in Harlem, I was in Harlem, I was living there -- And I said to him, I said, I wonder what would have happened to me if I had stayed? And you know David.

Angelou: I know David.

Baldwin: Cause, y'know, I also wanted to stay. I didn't wanna go. David laughed. That laugh.

Angelou: Terrible, knowing laugh.

Baldwin: He said, You'd be dead, everybody else is.

-- Maya Angelou & James Baldwin in Conversation