James Arthur Baldwin was an essayist, playwright, novelist, and activist known for works including 'Notes of a Native Son,' 'The Fire Next Time' and 'Go Tell It on the Mountain.' His essays explore the complexities of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies. His works examine themes of societal and self-acceptance, masculinity, sexuality, race, and class which weave to create narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements towards social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement. His novel If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning dramatic film in 2018 directed and produced by filmmaker Barry Jenkins. His characters are often African American, gay and bisexual men also frequently feature as protagonists in his literature. Baldwin died November 30, 1987, from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.