James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time should be required reading; it is so good I’m mad I did not read it at least a decade sooner. As the two essays in this volume are grounded in personal introspection, by the time Baldwin turns his gaze outward to the world, he does so with a rare and steady stare that yields insightful understanding.

“Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don’t be afraid” (9)

In Baldwin’s first essay, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” he writes these words to his nephew James. He lovingly speaks to the one who has inherited both his beautiful name and his country’s ugly systemic oppression. James wants the younger James to understand what has taken him a lifetime to reckon with, and he does so with elegant prose. Baldwin’s words continue to hold relevance as his perspective is nothing but honest and this work has inspired so many other iconic reads, most notably Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him” (47)

Baldwin’s second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” is an amazing critique of so many cultural elements, with a special highlight on organized religion. By the time of writing this essay, Baldwin found himself disillusioned with the Christian church that he participated in (even preached in) during his youth, as well as Elijah Muhammad’s isolationist form of Islam. There is much that religion can offer and Baldwin does not rebuke this. Rather, his critiques of religious groups are framed in how they can (or don’t) actually help black people, or advance the causes of disenfranchised individuals. He always hits up, never down.

“In the United States, violence and heroism have been made synonymous except when it comes to blacks… The real reason that non-violence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes—I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether—is that the white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened. One wishes they would say so more often” (58-9)

Both timely and timeless, what Baldwin calls “non-violence” is now rendered in the current national dialogue as “civility.” While non-violence was used quite effectively in 1960s, a time when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was pragmatically employing a type of non-violent civility to strategically and successfully push for change, today I have heard many good arguments that counter certain components of this approach. Most specifically, there is something inherently unfair about placing the onus on the oppressed to humanize themselves in the eyes of their oppressors. All too often have I seen good arguments belittled and passionate advocates gaslighted because their delivery is not delicate enough for a more advantaged listener. Heaven forbid the privileged suffer minor emotional offense.

All said and done, The Fire Next Time is an amazing read that I could not recommend more. Furthermore, I write this review in 2019, the year that will commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to what would become the United States. Just as Baldwin reflected on the century following emancipation, I think it is immensely important to reflect on the America’s unjust history and legacy, especially if we even want to hope for a better tomorrow.