The Fire Next Time: James Baldwin (Penguin Modern Classics)

This is a pair of essays by the American writer and civil rights activist. The first and very much shorter one, "My Dungeon Shook" is a letter from the author to his namesake nephew on the centenary of the emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. He advises him that he "can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a n*****" (my ellipsis), and defines integration to mean that black people "with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it." These themes are expanded in the much longer essay "Down at the Cross", which originally appeared in the "New Yorker" as "Letter from a Region in my Mind" in which he recounts how he sees the growth of black people's consciousness as they grow up in a white-dominated society; his absorption into, and then alienation from the black churches of his youth, and the salvation he thought he could find from the grim realities of life: "When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life." He says he realised that "the Bible had been written by white men. I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a descendant of Ham, who had been cursed, and that I was therefore predestined to be a slave. This had nothing to do with anything I was, or contained, or could become; my fate had been sealed for ever, from the beginning of time." He spends much of the essay detailing his discussions and disagreements with the Nation of Islam, then led by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, an organisation which believed that all black people in the US should adopt Islam (or were really already Muslim, so a "readoption") and declare themselves an independent self-governing society. While he understands why the message of this organisation is so powerful and compelling, he cannot accept Elijah's contention that all white people are devils, saying that he "did not care if white and black people married, and that I had many white friends. I would have no choice, if it came to it, but to perish with them, for (I said to myself, but not to Elijah), ‘I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn’t love more important than colour?" Baldwin concludes that one must "accept the fact, whatever one does with it thereafter, that the Negro has been formed by this nation, for better or for worse, and does not belong to any other – not to Africa, and certainly not to Islam. The paradox – and a fearful paradox it is – is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is unwilling to accept his past." There is no alternative but to forge a single nation: "we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation – if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women. To create one nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create two, one black and one white". A hopeful message written at a time in the early 1960s when many struggles still had to be fought. Thought-provoking read.

He is an excellent writer and showcases how being black in the West is often problematic.

Having read Giovanni's Room and Go Tell It On The Mountain I was still hungry for more Baldwin. He writes some of the most beautiful prose in the English Language that I have ever read. This book, particularly Down At The Cross, is more of a stream of consciousness expressing his deep sadness and rage at the problems of racial injustice in the US - and worldwide. He gives an insightful description of a meeting with the founder of the Nation of Islam and paints a very bleak picture with personal, political and historical detail. I learned more in this short book about the depth of feeling of black Americans regarding their status in America in the early 'sixties than I have anywhere else. A tough read, made more bearable knowing there is now a black president in the Whitehouse. And thank God...

Beautiful work ❤️

The Fire Next Time. James Baldwin is a highly intelligent man who gives a thought provoking insight into religion and the social aspects of life from the African Americans viewpoint & journey in the West. At times upsetting and very serious, but a book of great depth from a truly skilled writer.

I would give this book 10 stars if I could. James Baldwin has to be one the greatest writers ever and his words are as relevant today as they were when he first wrote them.

A masterful work of African American intellectualism. Really tight and emotive prose, and sadly still quite relevant to the current political state of America. Well worth reading for anyone trying to educate themselves following last year’s BLM protests.

A powerful and convincing set of arguments against the myth of race. The writing also has a poetical and literary beauty that further enhances and universalises its message.

Every word is truth

Type is very small and there are few paragraph breaks which makes this very hard to read. There must be his works published somewhere that are really readable. So disappointing.