laurenleigh 's review for:

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

4.0

emotional informative medium-paced

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I found this a little hard to follow at times in audio format, but James Baldwin is always a fantastic author. Having read Go Tell It On The Mountain helped, as I had a grasp on Baldwin’s childhood and religious upbringing. The first section was a moving letter to his nephew, like a beautiful precursor to Ta-Nahisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. The part that stands out to me most right now is Baldwin’s short discussion of Brown v. Board of Education. I did some further reading here afterwards. It seems highly likely that a major factor in this Supreme Court decision was our country’s concerns about our international image during the Cold War. As we continued to segregate schools, politicians and court justices worried we were alienating foreign counties that we wanted to be on our side. While this was a major step towards racial equality, it seems unsurprising to me that this progress came out of white self-interest. Baldwin’s overall message felt powerful and hopeful, and it was a nice short read after previous longer texts.