Geovanna Septimio Landivar

14 October 2022

In “Stranger in the village,” James Baldwin documents his confrontation and feelings of

otherness while visiting a small Swiss village being the first black man to have ever been there,

and how after that experience, he could better observe the relationship between racism and the

struggles with identity and, social acceptance.

The way he describes his encounters is so real to me, and at the same time, I cannot

sincerely understand what he went through since, in my experience of my race, I never have, and

will never confront something similar. But understanding the main points of the essay I can

relate the term “Stranger in the village” to identity struggles, social acceptance, and segregation –

with that, I can create my relationship with the term “stranger in the village” with my own

experiences.

At the age of fourteen, I had a good friend in school; we were both the same age, and we

loved spending our free time together. Because of that, I had an opportunity to know her family

during my visits to her house – and there, I could, for the first time (as I remember), witness

racism and xenophobia.

Her mother is Brazilian, coming from a white and privileged family. Her Dad is Bolivian,

coming from a simple family. As far as I know, since they met, they had many challenges being

together because the mother’s family had never accepted him. While I was with my friend and

her grandmother in her house, I heard things from the grandma like “foreigners suck, never have

a relationship with them,” and “we have a new baby in the family, and he is white.” I remember

that after listening to this, I could understand better what racism was about, but I could never
have a deep conversation with my friend about this situation; I always thought that talking about

this could hurt her feelings somehow.

Nowadays, we still have a friendship, and during my last trip to Brazil I visited her, she is

a mom now and I was excited to meet her newborn. When I got to her house, her family was

there, mom, dad, and husband. We had a great time together, talking about the new life with a

baby. During our conversation, her dad commented on “how the grandson was pretty and white”

that comment shocked me and took me back to the past when I used to witness speeches like

these coming from the maternal grandma. Connecting this experience with Baldwin’s essay, I

create a link with the struggle with social identity and segregation my friend’s father went

through and that he unconsciously started taking the white astonishment as tribute when he

related the baby’s color to beauty.