4.61 AVERAGE

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James Baldwin has a talent for writing of his ideas and ideals in a way that was extremely intelligent and accessible, as well as very powerful. The two letters that make up this small volume do an amazing job of portraying the political and (to a point) the religious culture at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Examining many angles of the situation, from prevalent white views of African Americans to how these views affect people in the black community to the growing influence (and perhaps danger) of the Nation of Islam, Baldwin skilfully articulates the complexity and the number of influences of the early civil rights movement and, reflected in the epigraph and title of the volume, the inevitability of a world-shaking revolution if racial tensions fail to improve.

This is a fantastic lens through which to view the beginning of the movement, and anyone interested in that period of history should read it.
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The photo gracing the cover of the 1992 edition of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (credit: Sophie Bassouls, Paris, 1972) is so appropriate. His piercing eyes seemingly say "What the hell?" Even though written before the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Baldwin's text unfortunately remains relevant every time I've read it, even now, over 60 years later. A beautiful entry to the writer/activist, The Fire Next Time engages readers intimately, delivering razor sharp commentary with the delicacy of florist. Both Down At The Cross and My Dungeon Shook are as much spiritual as political. I love it. I hate it...

This forced me to learn the highlighting feature on my Kindle. 5 stars are not enough for something this prescient and prophetic.
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The first letter was a searing epic. The part about religion and the founding of Nation of Islam from a writer and activist's perspective who also doesn't seem much to care for King's version of protest was extremely interesting but a bit convoluted.

Highly relevant--I feel like at least the letter to his nephew should be required reading in all schools.
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First five star read this year! And first Baldwin! I picked it up because it kept being referenced in the Black female artist anthology I read last month, I KNOW WHAT THE RED CLAY LOOKS LIKE, and w o w I am so so glad I picked it up. I felt like I highlighted a majority of the book. 
 
This slim book contains two essays: a letter from Baldwin to his nephew, and an essay where Baldwin is grappling with religion and race. This is a short book, but I implore you to take your time with. I read it in 2-3 sittings, which was perfect because it allowed me to savor his ideas and words. 
 
I am in awe and floored by how much Baldwin leads with love and wholeheartedly believes that our best selves cannot be one that comprises our soul, our dignity to justify the ends. And when Baldwin talks about love, he means: “I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth”. 
 
I absolutely loved Baldwin’s dissection and take down of the [white] Christianity and colonialism, and the hypocrisy of the way religion is used to justify racist means and ends. It was cutting, poignant, and shared in a way he was grappling with his own identity. 
 
My main critique is that Baldwin’s writing in the second essay was a bit harder to follow. Namely, his sentences were long and winding, which forced me to constantly flip back and forth between pages. I didn’t mind TOO much because I was fine going at it slowly, but it sometimes did get frustrating constantly trying to figure out what each clause was referring to in his long sentences. 
 
I cannot recommend this powerful read enough. I felt pain, I felt joy, I felt heavy, I felt hope. This is depressingly still relevant today, but it makes his words feel all the more poignant. 

This book could have saved me so much trouble if I had read it 15 years earlier.

Not sure why I didn't write this up a few months ago when I read it, but it should suffice for a review to say that I have already reread it.

In the opening section, written directly to his namesake nephew, Baldwin writes the "crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, [is] that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it," and quick on the heels of Coates' We Were 8 Years in Power and his deep dive into the carceral state it's difficult to believe that this sentence has aged a day in more than forty years.

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