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Come Out the Wilderness
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection
James Baldwin’s commanding prose remains as pressing in its compassionate portrayal of marginalized figures today as it was during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement.
In “Come Out the Wilderness,” an essential and tremendous classic of American literature, Baldwin unmasks the heartbreak of one African American woman’s spiritual, sexual, moral, and ultimately futile struggle for control of her future and her happiness in mid-century New York.
An ebook short.
James Baldwin’s commanding prose remains as pressing in its compassionate portrayal of marginalized figures today as it was during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement.
In “Come Out the Wilderness,” an essential and tremendous classic of American literature, Baldwin unmasks the heartbreak of one African American woman’s spiritual, sexual, moral, and ultimately futile struggle for control of her future and her happiness in mid-century New York.
An ebook short.
- GenresFictionShort StoriesRace
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2016
41 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
About the author
James Baldwin
392 books17.1k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 16, 2024
Come out the Wilderness,
Come out the Wilderness,
How did you feel when you
Come out the Wilderness
Leaning on the Lord?
James Baldwin’s fiction was a way he recreated and worked out autobiography. In Come Out the Wilderness for the first time he cast his fictional avatar as a young woman, and this sex swap allowed him to be particularly candid. Ruth, a young Black woman recently arrived from the South, is laid bare for us to observe her pain and guilts, and above all her loneliness.
As in much of Baldwin’s fiction, the story unfolds largely as an inner monologue — a beautiful flow of interior though where the character reveals herself to herself. Ruth is living with a young, white artist, and she knows the relationship is doomed, but feels helpless to do anything other to ride it out to the end.
”Love ought…to be a means of being released from guilt and terror. But Paul’s touch would never release her. He had power over her, not because she was free, but because she was guilty…Whenever he touched her she became blacker and dirtier than ever. The loneliest place ever was in Paul’s arms.”
Her crumbling relationship compounds the profound loneliness and isolation she feels. She is one of only two people of color at her job, the second being her boss who she initially sees as an Uncle Tom. She has been sexually shamed by an older brother, which was a factor in her fleeing North to the city, yet experiences guilt over the aging parents she abandoned in the South.
Ruth remembers the consolation her mother took in religion, always singing the song which gave this story its name. Yet she sees no solace in that religion here in this great Northern city, observing of Black religion in the North:
”Their religion was strongly mixed with an opportunistic respectability and with ambitions to better society and their own place in it…And what remained of this religion, which was principally vindictiveness, prevented them from understanding anything whatever about those concrete, Northern realities that made them at once so obsequious and so venomous.”
Isolated from family, cut off from the ancient consolation of faith, wracked with guilt over the consequences of trying to do more, achieve more, than American society had planned for her, and caught between the aspirations of art and the prison of security, Ruth’s story is Baldwin’s own. And as always in Baldwin’s work, the final solution, the key to every problem, came down to a question of love, or its lack. He ended this beautiful and sad tale thus:
”The sons of the masters were roaming the world looking for arms to hold them, and the arms that might have held them could not forgive. A sound escaped her. She was astonished to realize it was a sob.”
Come out the Wilderness,
How did you feel when you
Come out the Wilderness
Leaning on the Lord?
James Baldwin’s fiction was a way he recreated and worked out autobiography. In Come Out the Wilderness for the first time he cast his fictional avatar as a young woman, and this sex swap allowed him to be particularly candid. Ruth, a young Black woman recently arrived from the South, is laid bare for us to observe her pain and guilts, and above all her loneliness.
As in much of Baldwin’s fiction, the story unfolds largely as an inner monologue — a beautiful flow of interior though where the character reveals herself to herself. Ruth is living with a young, white artist, and she knows the relationship is doomed, but feels helpless to do anything other to ride it out to the end.
”Love ought…to be a means of being released from guilt and terror. But Paul’s touch would never release her. He had power over her, not because she was free, but because she was guilty…Whenever he touched her she became blacker and dirtier than ever. The loneliest place ever was in Paul’s arms.”
Her crumbling relationship compounds the profound loneliness and isolation she feels. She is one of only two people of color at her job, the second being her boss who she initially sees as an Uncle Tom. She has been sexually shamed by an older brother, which was a factor in her fleeing North to the city, yet experiences guilt over the aging parents she abandoned in the South.
Ruth remembers the consolation her mother took in religion, always singing the song which gave this story its name. Yet she sees no solace in that religion here in this great Northern city, observing of Black religion in the North:
”Their religion was strongly mixed with an opportunistic respectability and with ambitions to better society and their own place in it…And what remained of this religion, which was principally vindictiveness, prevented them from understanding anything whatever about those concrete, Northern realities that made them at once so obsequious and so venomous.”
Isolated from family, cut off from the ancient consolation of faith, wracked with guilt over the consequences of trying to do more, achieve more, than American society had planned for her, and caught between the aspirations of art and the prison of security, Ruth’s story is Baldwin’s own. And as always in Baldwin’s work, the final solution, the key to every problem, came down to a question of love, or its lack. He ended this beautiful and sad tale thus:
”The sons of the masters were roaming the world looking for arms to hold them, and the arms that might have held them could not forgive. A sound escaped her. She was astonished to realize it was a sob.”
February 5, 2023
It took me awhile to get into the story and then it was over. Maybe I would do better with one of his longer pieces of work.
May 12, 2024
u know i'm bananas 4 baldwin
November 14, 2024
Oh my, this is devastating and beautiful. I love getting to be in awe of how something is written and this often occurs when I read Baldwin. I feel as if his stories are usually not told from a woman’s perspective and I thought he did a good job.
This story is of course great commentary on race and interracial relationships. It also excels in telling a story of feeling trapped in a life and relationship that no longer serve you, but simultaneously that you are terrified to leave or have change. A story that questions why certain men tend to dominate a woman’s psyche.
I can’t include all of them but here are some quotes I found meaning in:
Her mother had once been no older than she, Ruth, was today. She had probably been pretty, she had also wept and trembled and cried beneath the rude thrusting that was her master and her life, and children had knocked in her womb and split her as they came crying out. Out, and into the wilderness: she had placed them in the hands of God. She had known nothing but labor and sorrow, she had had to confront, every day of her life, the everlasting, nagging, infinitesimal details; it had clearly all come to nothing, how could she be singing still?
She felt like a river trying to run two ways at once: she felt herself shrinking from him, yet she flowed toward him too; she knew he felt it. "But as long as you're with me," she said, and she could not help herself, she felt she was about to cry; she held his face between her hands, pressing yet closer against him. "As long as you're with me." His face was white, his eyes glowed: there was a war in him too. Everything that divided them charged, for an instant, the tiny space between them. Then the veils of habit and desire covered both their eyes.
"Life is very long," said Paul at last. He kissed her. They both sighed. And slowly she surrendered, opening up before him like the dark continent, made mad and delirious and blind by the entry of a mortal as bright as the morning, as white as milk.
Love ought…to be a means of being released from guilt and terror. But Paul's touch would never release her. He had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty. To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake. This did not demand malice on his part, it scarcely demanded perception-it only demanded that he have, as, in fact, he overwhelmingly did have, an instinct for his own convenience. His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul's arms, And yet-she went into his arms with such eagerness and such hope. She had once thought herself happy. Was this because she had been proud that he was white? But-it was she who was insisting on these colors. Her blackness was not Paul's fault. Neither was her guilt. She was punishing herself for something, a crime she could not remember.
To tell everything is a very effective means of keeping secrets. Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.
The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them— could not forgive.
This story is of course great commentary on race and interracial relationships. It also excels in telling a story of feeling trapped in a life and relationship that no longer serve you, but simultaneously that you are terrified to leave or have change. A story that questions why certain men tend to dominate a woman’s psyche.
I can’t include all of them but here are some quotes I found meaning in:
Her mother had once been no older than she, Ruth, was today. She had probably been pretty, she had also wept and trembled and cried beneath the rude thrusting that was her master and her life, and children had knocked in her womb and split her as they came crying out. Out, and into the wilderness: she had placed them in the hands of God. She had known nothing but labor and sorrow, she had had to confront, every day of her life, the everlasting, nagging, infinitesimal details; it had clearly all come to nothing, how could she be singing still?
She felt like a river trying to run two ways at once: she felt herself shrinking from him, yet she flowed toward him too; she knew he felt it. "But as long as you're with me," she said, and she could not help herself, she felt she was about to cry; she held his face between her hands, pressing yet closer against him. "As long as you're with me." His face was white, his eyes glowed: there was a war in him too. Everything that divided them charged, for an instant, the tiny space between them. Then the veils of habit and desire covered both their eyes.
"Life is very long," said Paul at last. He kissed her. They both sighed. And slowly she surrendered, opening up before him like the dark continent, made mad and delirious and blind by the entry of a mortal as bright as the morning, as white as milk.
Love ought…to be a means of being released from guilt and terror. But Paul's touch would never release her. He had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty. To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake. This did not demand malice on his part, it scarcely demanded perception-it only demanded that he have, as, in fact, he overwhelmingly did have, an instinct for his own convenience. His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul's arms, And yet-she went into his arms with such eagerness and such hope. She had once thought herself happy. Was this because she had been proud that he was white? But-it was she who was insisting on these colors. Her blackness was not Paul's fault. Neither was her guilt. She was punishing herself for something, a crime she could not remember.
To tell everything is a very effective means of keeping secrets. Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.
The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them— could not forgive.
February 3, 2025
“Come Out The Wilderness,” by James Baldwin, is a concise portrait of a woman who struggles with two main themes in her life: covert racial conflict and unsettled childhood trauma. Although Baldwin has consistently used storytelling to deliver real life situations in all of his fictional writings, I found this one to be unique, mostly because there were numerous passages that felt more symbolic than in his other books. The writing was carefully crafted and subtle, and the content was thoughtful and highly relatable.
The first theme centers around a black woman, Ruth, who lives in perpetual conflict because she is in a live-in relationship with a white man, Paul, and can’t help but feel guilt over not dating within her race. Her struggle is further complicated by the fact that she thinks that Paul not only doesn’t love her, but has yet to come to terms with his implicit cultural biases as evidenced by his occasional demoralizing and racist comments. Because she believes his slurs are essentially ignorant, she wants him to stay, regardless of the fact that, consequently, he fills her with a growing hatred and even quiet rage towards him.
The second issue is the disintegration of her family ties, specifically because of their opinion of her. After a brutal correction from her father and brother over an alleged event that she insists never happened, she emotionally cuts off her family, and at the first available opportunity, she takes off to New York with a man twenty years her senior and lives with him for four years just to remove herself from their presence. As a result, the family dynamics were permanently altered, and though there was some communication between family members, it remained tainted with hidden animosity.
To bring this together, Ruth has spent the majority of her adult life licking her wounds that produced deep-seated insecurities. Between the childhood family rebuke and living in cognitive dissonance with a white man that she somehow still loves, the combination of the two has made her feel lost, intensely embittered and physically objectified, though the latter largely remained subconsciously unresolved. The story culminates in the end when she suddenly begins to grasp her emotional and psychological dilemma, hence the brilliant title of the book.
Although this is a short story that can easily be read in under three hours, it definitely packs a punch. Its subtlety is beautifully written, and I think it reflects the growing maturity of Baldwin as a writer. In my opinion, “Come Out The Wilderness” is as relevant as anything Baldwin has written, and if you’re looking for a good read to pass the time with something significant to think about with coffee in hand, this is the book for you.
The first theme centers around a black woman, Ruth, who lives in perpetual conflict because she is in a live-in relationship with a white man, Paul, and can’t help but feel guilt over not dating within her race. Her struggle is further complicated by the fact that she thinks that Paul not only doesn’t love her, but has yet to come to terms with his implicit cultural biases as evidenced by his occasional demoralizing and racist comments. Because she believes his slurs are essentially ignorant, she wants him to stay, regardless of the fact that, consequently, he fills her with a growing hatred and even quiet rage towards him.
The second issue is the disintegration of her family ties, specifically because of their opinion of her. After a brutal correction from her father and brother over an alleged event that she insists never happened, she emotionally cuts off her family, and at the first available opportunity, she takes off to New York with a man twenty years her senior and lives with him for four years just to remove herself from their presence. As a result, the family dynamics were permanently altered, and though there was some communication between family members, it remained tainted with hidden animosity.
To bring this together, Ruth has spent the majority of her adult life licking her wounds that produced deep-seated insecurities. Between the childhood family rebuke and living in cognitive dissonance with a white man that she somehow still loves, the combination of the two has made her feel lost, intensely embittered and physically objectified, though the latter largely remained subconsciously unresolved. The story culminates in the end when she suddenly begins to grasp her emotional and psychological dilemma, hence the brilliant title of the book.
Although this is a short story that can easily be read in under three hours, it definitely packs a punch. Its subtlety is beautifully written, and I think it reflects the growing maturity of Baldwin as a writer. In my opinion, “Come Out The Wilderness” is as relevant as anything Baldwin has written, and if you’re looking for a good read to pass the time with something significant to think about with coffee in hand, this is the book for you.
August 8, 2023
Just the right mix of self-hatred and masked separation anxiety…
“She knew that he was going to leave her. It was in his walk, his talk, his eyes. He wanted to go. He had already moved back, crouching to leap. And she had no rival. He was not going to another woman. He simply wanted to go.”
“She stared at him again, almost hating him. She blindly felt that he had no right to do this to her, to cause her to feel such a leap of hope, if he was only, in the end, going to give her back all her shame.”
“She knew that he was going to leave her. It was in his walk, his talk, his eyes. He wanted to go. He had already moved back, crouching to leap. And she had no rival. He was not going to another woman. He simply wanted to go.”
“She stared at him again, almost hating him. She blindly felt that he had no right to do this to her, to cause her to feel such a leap of hope, if he was only, in the end, going to give her back all her shame.”
October 13, 2019
งานชิ้นนี้เป็นเรื่องราวชีวิตสาวผิวสีคนหนึ่งที่หนีจากบ้านชนบทมาทำงานในเมืองใหญ่เพราะความจำเป็น เธอพบรักกับคนขาวที่ไม่ค่อยจะเอาไหนและไม่ได้รักเธอจริง ชีวิตเธอเลยน่าสงสาร เพราะเหงาและไม่ก้าวหน้าไปไหนเสียที ภาษาที่ใช้สวยดี แต่อ่านแล้วเหนื่อยแทนตัวละครจัง
3.5
3.5
December 6, 2020
Letting Go and Moving Forward
Ruth has reflects on her past and how it has impacted her world view as she navigates work and failing relationship. There is an imbalance of power that she seeks to overcome as she moves forward to accepting and affirming herself
Ruth has reflects on her past and how it has impacted her world view as she navigates work and failing relationship. There is an imbalance of power that she seeks to overcome as she moves forward to accepting and affirming herself
July 21, 2019
One of those stories that is striking in part because it's unrelatable to my own life experiences? It is a striking story. Hah. and if we're speaking on things I'm not qualified to speak on, Baldwin writes women well; I mean, reading his women is not jarring, like say, reading women written by Heinlein.
But still, five stars all around; great short story, and the kindle edition was well formatted and well put-together.
But still, five stars all around; great short story, and the kindle edition was well formatted and well put-together.
April 23, 2025
James Baldwin's story was in Popular Library edition that included stories by Richard Wright and W.M. Kelley and others - most of which was compellingly raw and honest.
May 5, 2025
cortito y al pie.
Ruth mi amor
Ruth mi amor
July 30, 2025
"The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them—could not forgive."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2017
review coming soon.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews