The American writer’s moral duty is attacking the nation’s sacred myths.

Evidence

“It is, alas, the truth that to be an American writer today means mounting an unending attack on all that Americans believe themselves to hold sacred,” Baldwin wrote in 1962. “It means fighting an astute and agile guerrilla warfare with that American complacency which so inadequately masks the American panic.” In this sense, Baldwin’s view of the writer was a decidedly moral one. The writer puts aside America’s myths and legends and forces a kind of confrontation with the society as it is, becoming a disturber of the peace in doing so. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 79

Categorization

• XREF: Charges the writer with confronting ‘the lie’ — grounds the writer-as-disturber role that the late Baldwin embodies.