The Fire Next Time (Vintage International)

As a voracious reader, there are few books that I have read and at the end felt as though I was a completely different person. Even fewer have moved me to the point of tears. James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is a book that did both. Before reading thisImage result for the fire next time book, I had only heard of Baldwin in passing and had never read any of his books. My friend and mentor Brad Kramer (who is an anthropologist and professor at Utah Valley University) recommended the book to me so I bought it out of a sense of duty to heed a mentors recommendation. However, I put the book off for a time and did not view it as urgent to read it. Then, while we were having lunch with Brad, he told me that he got similar feelings when reading Baldwin’s book that he did in past times when he was reading the scriptures (he and I are practicing Mormons). This increased my intrigued and I put the book on my list to read in the new year. I am not engaging in hyperbole when I state this book is one of the best that I have ever read. The book takes the form of a long essay divided into two parts. The first portion is Baldwin writing a letter to his fourteen year old nephew. The second (and most important part) is Baldwin’s account of his life as a black man in Harlem and how we as American’s must overcome our racial issues if we are truly to become a great nation. Baldwin, who lived during the Civil Rights Movement, is a much different person than the two men who have come to be the faces of that era: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Dr. King was a Christian minister who saw the movement in terms of the Christian message. Malcolm was a minister in the Nation of Islam (until 1964) and thought that the blacks and whites should be separated and that blacks were superior to whites. Baldwin was somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. He recounts in the essay that he was attracted to Christianity as a youth because of its power to move people and eventually became a Christian minister himself. But, after seeing how the Christian Church was not making progress on the race issue and seeing how it could be used to justify racism, he left Christianity. However, Christianity never left him. In the essay Baldwin comes across with the air of prophet, warning that if change isn’t made the consequences will be dire. Unlike Malcolm, Baldwin did not believe that one place was superior to the other (he says just because something is different does not make it superior or inferior). His message, while spoken in religious terms, does not require adherence to any theology. I will address two key moments in the book, and leave it to the reader to read the book and fill in the rest. While Baldwin was in Chicago, he had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. While he ate with Elijah, he was impressed with the power of the man over his followers, but noted that he was disgusted with the Nation’s teachings. While he respected the Nation for making blacks more self-reliant, he could not endorse their racist ideology, which he saw as the same story as what white Americans were doing but in reverse. This spoke to me personally because I also have had the opportunity to be around members of the Nation of Islam, and like Baldwin was more than uncomfortable. The message is counterproductive and nonsensical. The most important part of the good is after Baldwin describes his meeting with the Elijah Muhammad. He states: Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves to totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeple, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. Baldwin concludes that America needs to become post-racial, meaning that while we can acknowledge that we have differences in skin color, there is no reason to attribute certain characteristics to people due to there skin color. Further, while Baldwin was friends with the aforementioned Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, he also points out that we all need each other; racism has an equally bad effect upon whites as it does upon blacks. In an era where racism still raises its ugly head, The Fire Next Time is a book that all Americans, regardless of color, need to have in their personal library. I plan to read it once a year going forward. A truly wonderful, remarkable book.

"The Fire Next Time" is a very deep and personal work about race relations in America, both in general and as it pertains to the author, Jame Baldwin. Personally, I was mesmerized by the work. I found it somewhat painful, therefore to say I "enjoyed it" seems inappropriate. I feel it is excellent and I intend to re read it. The work is comprised of two parts. The first is a letter to his 14 year old nephew. It is not lengthy. The second part is an essay about the youth of the author, religion, and race relations in America. Although written in 1963 at the Centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, it seems as relevant now as in 1963. I study African American literature and culture as a specific interest, but not to the exclusion of other literature. In regard to African American Literature, James Baldwin is high on my personal list of favorite authors after James Weldon Johnson. This particular work is deep and erudite. Mostly it is clearly written. There are some philosophical aspects to this work that I need to mull over and re read. I need to say that many of Mister Baldwin's observations and experiences ring true with me. As a retired police officer, some of the experiences alleged by Mister Baldwin makes me ill. I wish to say I never did anything like what Mister Baldwin describes, I never witnessed anything like he describes, and would not have allowed it. Nonetheless I believe these things happen. On the other hand, Mister Baldwin describes apparent misconduct and no onlookers intervene. That I have witnessed. I feel actual moral courage is in short supply in all matters, not just Race. When I was senior enough to have my own work station, I kept a poem "First They Came for The Jews" by Martin Niemoller on the wall above my desk. In summary, I found this to be a compelling work by an excellent author. There are parts of this work I need to think about. I fully intend to re read the entire work. Thank You for taking the time to read this review.

Baldwin is at his best here, wrestling with his dualistic thoughts on the white man/negro issues in 1963 during the Civil Rights movement. He recounts his meetings with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad after being completely disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the Christian churches, which he equates - understandably - to a white European power grab that suppresses minorities in order to keep their power. What I love about Baldwin, however, is that he recognizes this as a thoroughly "man" issue, and no matter what group holds power, they will mistreat, oppress, and suppress those underneath them. Because of this, he realizes that the Nation of Islam movement had the exact same aims, just with a different color, and while he respected their beliefs, he chose not to become immersed in the mirror image of what he was experiencing. I also love that even though he suffered severe prejudice and discrimination, he was able to see that not all white people are a certain way, just like not all black people are the same. He knew it was pointless to bring in any anecdotal evidence..."but I have white friends that are not like this" because he would be shouted down by both sides. He even brings out the point that the Neo-Nazi party contributed to the Nation of Islam because they had the same goal - to stay in power at the expense of others, and those others are "of the devil." He also quoted Bobby Kennedy that a black man would be able to be President one day, though Baldwin completely disagreed with this . I wish he had been alive to witness this, and perhaps this would have given him hope that not all is lost between the races. I appreciate and learned so much from him. Baldwin is incredibly eloquent, even more so in his novels, but this short synopsis is by far one of his most important works that will stay with me a very, very long time.