As Gilberto has noted, and Alex & I asked in our presentation: Did racism kill Rufus or did Rufus kill Rufus? While the argument for racism killing Rufus is obvious, I also want to make space for another argument that Black theorists sometimes make, which is that Black folks have historically used suicide as a way to die on their own terms instead of letting white people exploit their labor or terrorize/ kill them. And I mean, if Baldwin can’t figure it out then what does that mean for us? I don’t know y’all. It might look like he’s just going about doing his own thing but he definitely does feel homoerotic feelings and so, I wonder, because society doesn’t treat folks on the queer spectrum with respect, how did Rufus manage? I didn’t really give a response to this because these are the things I think about all the time. And lastly, he never confronts (or at least doesn’t reveal) his sexuality to us. He one hundred percent gets treated like a black man in America, even though we should think about whether or not Rufus is fully aware of what that means. His disassociation from his friends and family was certainly alarming. Somewhere not too far from the beginning of the book, Rufus’ depression becomes legible to the reader. I mean, I think that Megan brought up a great point, that I think we will possibly bring up again, and that is did Rufus kill Rufus or were there other factors that took his own life? It’s really important that we not dismiss his suicide as just his own internal factors and that we look at the events in his life that made him take his own life.
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