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A review by rose_peterson
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
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.