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James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Dial Press, 1963) Reissued by Vintage in paperback in 1993 The Fire Next Time is a stark autobiography of the black novelist and activist living in Harlem from approximately World War Two to the early Sixties. Written in the form of two personal essays, the first one to his nephew, The Fire Next Time doesn't spare blacks, whites, Christianity, or Islam as he critiques their roles in keeping a black person subservient and servile and also blames them for the increasing divide between the two races. In the first essay, "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" Baldwin writes, "You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason....Please try to be clear, dear James, about the reality which lies behind the word acceptance and integration. There is no reason for you to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you." In the next, longer essay, "Down At The Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind", Baldwin describes his own passage into the church solely as a means to escape his fathers' dominance and inability to accept that he was not allowed to do the same things as a white boy. Also, he was terrified that he would end up, like many of his friends, on "the Avenue", a wretched man "settling in for the long, hard winter of life." Writing in a simple and brutally honest manner, Baldwin describes through his friends and his own experiences (including a meeting with Malcolm X and one with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Mohammed) the hypocrisy existing among both white and black Americans. It's no wonder that The Atlanic found it "so eloquent in its passion and so scorching in its candor that it is bound to unsettle any reader." MORE: Baldwin's publisher provides links to crucial articles about him PBS' American Masters series profiles Baldwin |
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