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Loading... The Fire Next Time (Vintage International)by James Baldwin
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Baldwin's discussion of race in America is telling and evocative, worth reading even now. It is worth time not only because of his passionate voice and intelligent look at the world around him in civil rights-era America, but for the reflection it gives of the world we still live in. In showing readers his own prejudices, he does his best to break down their own, effectively illuminating pieces of history that might more easily be left to be forgotten or ignored, but which inevitably affect the identities we work every day to form and preserve. This book is both dated and contemporary in various ways, but it is without a doubt worth a contemporary reader's time. Highly recommended. (  ) whitewavedarling | Feb 7, 2009 |  You probably won't find invective such as this past, say, 1980. Baldwin was a fiery black (r)evolutionary writer of the 1950s and 1960s, who wrote four solid books, and then seemed to disappear. This is an extended essay on why the blacks in America were becoming so violent, and why, too, the Nation of Islam was growing so fast. (  ) andyray | Jul 24, 2008 | I read this is in high school and have been returning to it ever since. It includes a couple of the very best extended essays ever written by an American. One of my very favorite books. I met Baldwin a couple years before he died, and I have a signed paperback of the book as well as the hardback. ( ) ostrom | Nov 27, 2007 | I can't recall when and how in high school I picked up one of Baldwin's books. I believe it was the school librarian, Miss Sherwood, or my civics teacher, Mr. Grayson, who encouraged me to pick up Baldwin. I identified with Baldwin in the respect that I too felt different and didn't know why. Baldwin because he was Black and Gay and I because I didn't know what I was at that age. ( ) latinobookgeek | Aug 7, 2007 | www.barnesandnoble.com Annotation At once a powerful evocation of his childhood in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, The Fire Next Time, which galvanized the nation in the early days of the Civil Rights movement, stands as one of the essential works of our literature. (Vintage)February From the Publisher A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.  goneal | Jul 17, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 067974472X, Paperback)It's shocking how little has changed between the races in this country since 1963, when James Baldwin published this coolly impassioned plea to "end the racial nightmare." The Fire Next Time--even the title is beautiful, resonant, and incendiary. "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" Baldwin demands, flicking aside the central race issue of his day and calling instead for full and shared acceptance of the fact that America is and always has been a multiracial society. Without this acceptance, he argues, the nation dooms itself to "sterility and decay" and to eventual destruction at the hands of the oppressed: "The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream."Baldwin's seething insights and directives, so disturbing to the white liberals and black moderates of his day, have become the starting point for discussions of American race relations: that debasement and oppression of one people by another is "a recipe for murder"; that "color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality"; that whites can only truly liberate themselves when they liberate blacks, indeed when they "become black" symbolically and spiritually; that blacks and whites "deeply need each other here" in order for America to realize its identity as a nation. Yet despite its edgy tone and the strong undercurrent of violence, The Fire Next Time is ultimately a hopeful and healing essay. Baldwin ranges far in these hundred pages--from a memoir of his abortive teenage religious awakening in Harlem (an interesting commentary on his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain) to a disturbing encounter with Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. But what binds it all together is the eloquence, intimacy, and controlled urgency of the voice. Baldwin clearly paid in sweat and shame for every word in this text. What's incredible is that he managed to keep his cool. --David Laskin (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:35:16 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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