James Baldwin was an American writer. He was born in 1924 and passed away in 1987. He grew up in New York's Harlem in the United States.

The person who had the greatest influence on him was his stepfather, David Baldwin. James Baldwin always said, "He formed me, and he raised me, and he did not let me starve". However, David always labeled his stepson as "ugly" because he had very prominent eyes and a very frail body. In grade school, the other students called James "Frog eyes" which only reinforced the stepfather's taunting. One day, the young James Baldwin excitedly yelled out to his mother to come and look out the window at a woman that he had spotted in the street. "Look, there's someone who is uglier than you and me."

James Baldwin grew up to become a much-admired and accomplished writer, but he was never able to shake the physical image of his childhood ugliness. In his best selling novel, "Go Tell it on the Mountain", the boy character (based on Baldwin) dreamed of being "beautiful, tall and popular," a boy who could become a poet or a college president or even a famous movie star.