A review by yolie
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.75

A poignant collection of essays on racial injustice in the United States.
It does a good job of drawing the history of Black Americans from their arrival in America, working on plantations and the corrosive effect that slavery still has on Black Americans in the 60s (when the book was published) but as still relevant now.

While there were parts that stuck out to me, I recognise that the book didn’t entirely connect with me. Maybe the experience of reading a digital copy affected how much enjoyment I could extract from engaging with the book physically, but I sometimes struggled to follow along with an idea he’d introduce and sometimes it felt like a ramble rather than an allegory. 

The book begins with a heartbreaking letter to his nephew, which acts as foreboding to the life which awaits him as a Black man in America. It’s sad how in all the time that’s passed since then, parents and guardians of young Black men still hold the same fear for them particularly in the political climate and social climate America is in. 

The last quarter of the book, after he meets with the Nation of Islam, was what brought down the score for me as a couldn’t quite connect the lines.

It’s book I’m willing to revisit and read again if I were to get a physical copy of it.
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