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Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
rose_peterson's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't particularly enjoy reading this book--in fact, I was often a bit underwhelmed, especially considering Glaude's extensive bibliography--but I found myself making constant connections to it in my non-reading life. I mentioned this book and its ideas to multiple people and saw traces of this cycle, the lie, the after times, and elsewhere all around me.
About a third of the way through this book, as Glaude traced Baldwin's life and drew parallels to our world today, he wrote, "And, God be my witness, we desperately need hope today. If we are not able to summon it, we may find ourselves where Jimmy found himself only a few years later--at the end of the after times, with the vicious cycle about to begin once more."
As another cycle seems to be revving up, I wonder if Glaude regrets publishing this book early in 2020; I wonder if he wishes he'd waited until after the pandemic and subsequent protests against racial injustice to track the "after times" into today. But, the further I got into the book, the more I wondered if this was perfect: Glaude gave us a roadmap that shows us the cycle we're in and also gave us, hopefully, the motivation to look within ourselves and at our world to disavow The Lie and tell the truth.
About a third of the way through this book, as Glaude traced Baldwin's life and drew parallels to our world today, he wrote, "And, God be my witness, we desperately need hope today. If we are not able to summon it, we may find ourselves where Jimmy found himself only a few years later--at the end of the after times, with the vicious cycle about to begin once more."
As another cycle seems to be revving up, I wonder if Glaude regrets publishing this book early in 2020; I wonder if he wishes he'd waited until after the pandemic and subsequent protests against racial injustice to track the "after times" into today. But, the further I got into the book, the more I wondered if this was perfect: Glaude gave us a roadmap that shows us the cycle we're in and also gave us, hopefully, the motivation to look within ourselves and at our world to disavow The Lie and tell the truth.
bamboobones_rory's review against another edition
4.0
I first heard of this book through the episode “James Baldwin's Fire/James Baldwin's Shadow” on the podcast Throughline (a podcast that connects history and current events). In that interview with Eddie S. Glaude Jr., his voice is full of passion, love, awe, and respect for James Baldwin- and he speaks of James Baldwin as a close friend, that he holds in his heart. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. did a tremendous job of summarizing James Baldwin's life and works and the context of Black civil rights activism at different times in Baldwin's life, and the American Lie, in the podcast. I enjoyed his oral telling of Baldwin's opinions and life more than reading it. I definitely would love to hear him speak in real life.
The book itself isn't exactly a biography, and isn't exactly an opinion piece. It's a mishmash of both, and while I recommend listening to Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s interview on Throughline, I think readers who are looking for more about the writings and thoughts of Baldwin are better off reading Baldwin's original work. Maybe the target audience is people who read summaries and biographies. I prefer reading Baldwin's own writings, and hopefully this book helps his writing gain popularity.
The book itself isn't exactly a biography, and isn't exactly an opinion piece. It's a mishmash of both, and while I recommend listening to Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s interview on Throughline, I think readers who are looking for more about the writings and thoughts of Baldwin are better off reading Baldwin's original work. Maybe the target audience is people who read summaries and biographies. I prefer reading Baldwin's own writings, and hopefully this book helps his writing gain popularity.
lchamblee's review against another edition
4.0
This is a tough read. There’s a lot of rage and anguish surrounding America’s insistence on refusing to acknowledge and own its racist history and the continued duality of the American experience. This book may hit home and feel too personal or you may disagree with the sentiments expressed, but it is a thought provoking read with themes I think people should be grappling with regularly, not just during Black History month.
sarita27's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
susethreads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
5.0
sweetearlgrey's review against another edition
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
As an admirer of Baldwin's work it was interesting to learn about his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Although the author's analyses were sometimes surface level and repetitive, the overall message is important. That said, I think that not including quotes and insights from Baldwin's novels is a missed opportunity, as his fiction was also a reflection of his life and of the world around him. I listened to the audiobook and while the author has a very pleasant voice, the slow pace made it difficult to stay engaged.
jakeyjake's review against another edition
5.0
Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s tour of James Baldwin's life and writing as it pertains to our time is as eloquent as it is relevant. It is not intended as a straightforward biography, nor a critical analysis of Baldwin's work, nor a discussion of historic and current affairs, but instead a sort of long-form braided essay including all of the above.
Professor Glaude does an incredible job of putting James Baldwin and his writing in context of the many civil rights movements during his time. I've read some of James Baldwin's fiction and non-fiction, but with Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s help I now feel like I have a better understanding of where James Baldwin is coming from when he writes Giovanni's Room in the 50s about Queer characters in Paris versus The Fire Next Time that featured Elijah Muhammad in '63 and then Beale Street in '74. So much had changed, including the murders of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. The Black Panthers turned on Baldwin for a time. Looking at the wider arc of his life, as Glaude helps us do, gives us a sense for his attitudes towards America at different points. Early on Baldwin seems to have hope he and others can change the sentiment of white people, but as time passes, and especially after his contemporaries get shot down, he loses much of that faith. 'It is up to white people to release themselves from their own captivity,' says Baldwin in the '70s. 'But I'm not comfortable ending here and it's not the lesson for our after times,' comments Glaude. 'Baldwin was right to give up on this folly.' He talks about how we've gotten stuck focusing on the working class white people, the Trump voters, as talking about living wages, healthcare as a right, affordable education, equal pay for women, equal rights for LGBTQ+ community or a fair criminal justice system somehow excludes working class white people. 'We're often told THEY are the heartbeat of the country and we ignore them at our peril. But to direct our attention to these voters, to give our energy over to convincing them to believe otherwise often takes us away from the difficult task of building a better world. In some ways they hold the country hostage and we compromise to appease them... All too often that compromise arrests substantive change. And Black people end of having to bear the burden of that compromise while white people get to go on with their lives.'
'Our task then is not to save Trump voters nor is it to demonize them. Our task is to work with every ounce of passion and every drop of love we have to make the kingdom new.' He says this involves telling the truth, implementing policies that remedy generations of inequity based on the lie, it involves centering a set of values that holds every human being sacred. All of this made possible by grass roots movements that shift politics.
Of Trump, 'he and his ideas are not exception. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples in the country's ongoing betrayal... When we make Trump exceptional we let ourselves off the hook. For he is us, just as surely as the slave-owning founding fathers are us. As surely as Lincoln with his talk of sending black people to Liberia was us, as surely as Reagan was us with his 'welfare queens.''
Some other quotes.
'If you will promise your elder brother that you will never, ever accept any of the many derogatory, degrading, reductive definitions that this society has ready for you, then I, Jimmy Baldwin, promise you I shall never betray you.'
James Baldwin
'To be an American writer today means to mount an unending attack on all that Americans believe to themselves to hold sacred.'
James Baldwin
The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the value gap is the idea that in America white lives has always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture for false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained.
-Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
'This was your job... to translate, somehow if you could, by whatever means you could find...I found myself in the deep south looking at the eyes of a black boy or a girl of ten, you know. To make it real, to force it on the world's attention.'
James Baldwin
Being a witness. Tell the story. Make it real for those who refuse to believe such a thing can happen, has happened, is happening here. Bring the suffering to the attention to those who wallow in willful ignorance. In short, shatter the illusions of innocence at every turn and attack all the shibboleths the country holds sacred.
-Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Esquire magazine interview in '68
Q: How can we get the black people to cool it?
JB: It is not for us to cool it.
Q: But aren't you the ones getting hurt the most?
JB: No. We are only the ones dying the fastest.
Baldwin: I'm not trying to accuse you, you know. That's not the point. But you have a lot to face. All teat can save you now is your confrontation with your own history, which is not your past but your present. Nobody cares what happened in the past, one can't afford to care what happened in the past, but your history has led you to this moment. And you can only begin to change yourself, and save yourself, by looking at what you're doing in the name of your history.
Most people aren't wholly saints or completely devils... One way to think about the difference between competing accounts of historical moments.. is to ask ourselves how that past reflects our current commitments and what kind of world that past might commend to us now. When we memorialize the confederacy... what exactly are we commending?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Professor Glaude does an incredible job of putting James Baldwin and his writing in context of the many civil rights movements during his time. I've read some of James Baldwin's fiction and non-fiction, but with Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s help I now feel like I have a better understanding of where James Baldwin is coming from when he writes Giovanni's Room in the 50s about Queer characters in Paris versus The Fire Next Time that featured Elijah Muhammad in '63 and then Beale Street in '74. So much had changed, including the murders of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. The Black Panthers turned on Baldwin for a time. Looking at the wider arc of his life, as Glaude helps us do, gives us a sense for his attitudes towards America at different points. Early on Baldwin seems to have hope he and others can change the sentiment of white people, but as time passes, and especially after his contemporaries get shot down, he loses much of that faith. 'It is up to white people to release themselves from their own captivity,' says Baldwin in the '70s. 'But I'm not comfortable ending here and it's not the lesson for our after times,' comments Glaude. 'Baldwin was right to give up on this folly.' He talks about how we've gotten stuck focusing on the working class white people, the Trump voters, as talking about living wages, healthcare as a right, affordable education, equal pay for women, equal rights for LGBTQ+ community or a fair criminal justice system somehow excludes working class white people. 'We're often told THEY are the heartbeat of the country and we ignore them at our peril. But to direct our attention to these voters, to give our energy over to convincing them to believe otherwise often takes us away from the difficult task of building a better world. In some ways they hold the country hostage and we compromise to appease them... All too often that compromise arrests substantive change. And Black people end of having to bear the burden of that compromise while white people get to go on with their lives.'
'Our task then is not to save Trump voters nor is it to demonize them. Our task is to work with every ounce of passion and every drop of love we have to make the kingdom new.' He says this involves telling the truth, implementing policies that remedy generations of inequity based on the lie, it involves centering a set of values that holds every human being sacred. All of this made possible by grass roots movements that shift politics.
Of Trump, 'he and his ideas are not exception. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples in the country's ongoing betrayal... When we make Trump exceptional we let ourselves off the hook. For he is us, just as surely as the slave-owning founding fathers are us. As surely as Lincoln with his talk of sending black people to Liberia was us, as surely as Reagan was us with his 'welfare queens.''
Some other quotes.
'If you will promise your elder brother that you will never, ever accept any of the many derogatory, degrading, reductive definitions that this society has ready for you, then I, Jimmy Baldwin, promise you I shall never betray you.'
James Baldwin
'To be an American writer today means to mount an unending attack on all that Americans believe to themselves to hold sacred.'
James Baldwin
The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the value gap is the idea that in America white lives has always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture for false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained.
-Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
'This was your job... to translate, somehow if you could, by whatever means you could find...I found myself in the deep south looking at the eyes of a black boy or a girl of ten, you know. To make it real, to force it on the world's attention.'
James Baldwin
Being a witness. Tell the story. Make it real for those who refuse to believe such a thing can happen, has happened, is happening here. Bring the suffering to the attention to those who wallow in willful ignorance. In short, shatter the illusions of innocence at every turn and attack all the shibboleths the country holds sacred.
-Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Esquire magazine interview in '68
Q: How can we get the black people to cool it?
JB: It is not for us to cool it.
Q: But aren't you the ones getting hurt the most?
JB: No. We are only the ones dying the fastest.
Baldwin: I'm not trying to accuse you, you know. That's not the point. But you have a lot to face. All teat can save you now is your confrontation with your own history, which is not your past but your present. Nobody cares what happened in the past, one can't afford to care what happened in the past, but your history has led you to this moment. And you can only begin to change yourself, and save yourself, by looking at what you're doing in the name of your history.
Most people aren't wholly saints or completely devils... One way to think about the difference between competing accounts of historical moments.. is to ask ourselves how that past reflects our current commitments and what kind of world that past might commend to us now. When we memorialize the confederacy... what exactly are we commending?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.