The Fire Next Time

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Summary: Wake up America!!
Review: If this book offends you then it has done it's job amazingly written and very enjoyable, makes you think about this nations future.

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Summary: A pinacle of literature
Review: If you want to know what is wrong with this country and how we got there, this book is a must read. A story of an American experience by a great American

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Summary: Scathing
Review: Illuminating aspects of our society, general human nature, and the human condition The Fire Next Time is a little saying a lot. Baldwins laconicity plunges at your soul. After this experience it becomes evident you have not read Baldwin but Baldwin has read you. Using his lifestyle as a backdrop Baldwins frank, pithy, profound work, demands to be read.

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Summary: Great Book From a Great Mind
Review: James A.Baldwin Doesn't Pull any Punches with this Blazing&Very Much Right on Time Book.this Book Speaks Volumes about the Continued Racial Divide in this Country.He Writes With Pure Honesty&RIght too the Point.He breaks things down to a Science.A Must Have&Timeless Book.

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Summary: A prescient assessment of racial relations, past and future
Review: James Baldwin caused quite a stir in 1961 when he published "Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The New Yorker, followed by "A Letter to My Nephew" in The Progressive the next month. He collected these two essays in this small volume, and it's considered (along with "Notes of a Native Son") his best work. His biting, heartfelt analysis on race relations flings its barbs equally at the legacy of American white supremacy and the duplicity of liberal white guilt; although it was written more than forty years ago, it reminds us both how far we've come and how far we have yet to go.

Baldwin frames his observations around two thematically related biographical episodes: his brief three-year stint as an adolescent Pentecostal preacher in Harlem in the early 1940s and his journalistic visit to the headquarter of the Nation of Islam in Chicago's South Side twenty years later. Both institutions, Baldwin finds, suffer from an ambivalent myopia: Christianity in general "helped to protect and sanctify the power that was so ruthlessly being used by people who were indeed seeking a city, but not one in the heavens, and one to be made, very definitely, by captive hands"; the Nation of Islam "inculcated in the demoralized Negro population a truer and more individual sense of its own worth" through the "fearful paradox" of creating a hopeful future with "an invented past." Blacks, he seems to say, have traded in the belief system forced on them by their oppressors to a understandable longing for an illusory past. His conclusion is aggressive but perceptive: "the Negro has been formed by this nation, for better or for worse, and does not belong to any other--not to Africa, and certainly not to Islam."

But that's only half the story--or certainly less than half. Baldwin has far more to say about this nation's white majority; the underlying subject is the predicament of " 'the so-called American Negro,' who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised in a nation that has kept him bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognized him as human being." Baldwin correctly posits that, historically, the usual recourse by an oppressed group in such desperate circumstances has been violent upheaval. Throughout history--white history--it is incontrovertible that "violence and heroism have been made synonymous," from the Norman Invasion to the American Revolution. And, indeed, in such a nation as ours, "there is no reason that black men should be expected to be more patient, more forbearing, more farseeing than white; indeed, quite the contrary."

Despite the historical legacy and Baldwin's dire warnings of the potential for bloodshed, Baldwin nevertheless remains cautiously hopeful for the future, and he predicted--correctly, notwithstanding church bombings and assassinations and riots--that integration and civil rights victories and black advancement might be achieved with relatively little violence, certainly when compared to the horrors other revolutions have engendered. For one thing, blacks had--and have--an advantage: they understand, all too well, white Americans, while the reverse is not--and has never been--true: "Ask any Negro what he knows about the white people with whom he works. And then ask the white people with whom he works what they know about him."

For another, American black history has, if anything, been testimony "to nothing less then the perpetual achievement of the impossible." Only by acknowledging the past and confronting the future Americans can "achieve our country, and change the history of the world."

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Summary: You must read this
Review: James Baldwin is one of the great American writers of this century. Despite being written several decades ago, this book will challenge your ideas about contemporary culture, the 'racial barrier' and how we got to where we are. If you are a Caucasian American you will find some of what he has to say difficult to accept. Get over it - this is the class you never got in school, the perspective no one ever taught you.

If you like this book, try 'Another Country' out. It's much more of a novel, and attacks the same issues in a story format instead of a narrative.

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Summary: Baldwin's Life Story Captured
Review: James Baldwin's novel The Fire Next Time is a narrative of Baldwin's thoughts and perceptions of society throughout his life. This book expresses the point of view of a man who grew up in poverty. Poverty for Baldwin was the streets of Harlem and all of the drug trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, and crime that took place on a daily basis. The atmosphere in which Baldwin grew up in directly affected the man he became and his views on certain issues.

Baldwin was a young man during some of the most critical times in United States history and his outlook on the Civil Rights Movement is the focus this book. Growing up in Harlem, the inequalities of the black man become painfully apparent to Baldwin. He struggles with the black leaders of the time and their preaching. However, an invitation to meet with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, provides important insight to this group. Baldwin and Muhammad's perception of white people are clearly different but the two accept each other and continue on with their lives. Muhammad and his followers believe that the white mans reign over the earth is coming to a close and blacks will soon be superior. The relationship between these two men is complicated; Muhammad seems interested in recruiting Baldwin to his cause but Baldwin remains focused on equality.

W.E.B. DuBois once said, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line" (103). This issue of power and the color line is constant throughout the novel and it becomes apparent that the struggle for power seems to be drawn with racial lines. The key black figures in the novel struggle against the white culture to gain a foothold to launch themselves out of the wings and into the spotlight of the nation. Dialogue between Baldwin and a few characters question whether power is obtained from the number of followers, "it is now absolutely clear that white people are a minority in the world" (70), or the amount of money available, "He spoke to me...of the amount of money that is annually at the disposal of Negros-something like twenty billion dollars" (79).

Baldwin seems partially interested in joining the Nation of Islam but rethinks his decision and draws his own conclusion of how equality and justice will be obtained. His brilliant insight has the strength to change lives and lead to equality. This novel would be perfect for a reader who is looking to understand how people of different social and economic classes perceived the civil rights movement. As a college student interested in history, the historical changes presented in this book held my attention. This book requires the reader to think of their own society and how it evolved to its current standing. This book demands the reader to think and to understand the meaning of Baldwin's words. With thought and consideration, Baldwin's theories on equality and accepting others will become clear to the reader.

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Summary: A work of prophetic power
Review: Of all of the great authors of the 20th century, James Baldwin was probably closest, both in style and moral authority, to some of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. "The Fire Next Time," first published back in 1963, represents Baldwin at his most impassioned. This book consists of an open letter to Baldwin's nephew, along with an extended autobiographical essay. Throughout the book, Baldwin writes with insight and compassion about the complexities of race in the United States.

Baldwin writes of his spiritual crisis as a teenager--a crisis which led to his career as a youth minister in an African-American Christian church. He writes bitterly of his ultimate disillusionment with the emptiness and hypocrisy he found in the church. Baldwin also writes of his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, the fiery leader of the Nation of Islam sect and mentor to controversial Black leader Malcolm X.

Baldwin's testament is a harsh critique of 20th century Christendom. Reflecting upon the rise of the Nazis in one of the world's most "Christian" nations, Baldwin declares, "From my own point of view, the fact of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete forever any question of Christian superiority, except in technological terms."

"The Fire Next time" is both an illuminating historical document of a turbulent era, and a superb piece of literary craftsmanship. All those interested in the art of nonfiction prose should take time to experience Baldwin's mastery of the medium. But even more importantly, we should all take time to consider his ideas on race, on religion, on prejudice, and on hope.

Rating:
Summary: A work of prophetic power
Review: Of all of the great authors of the 20th century, James Baldwin was probably closest, both in style and moral authority, to some of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. "The Fire Next Time," first published back in 1963, represents Baldwin at his most impassioned. This book consists of an open letter to Baldwin's nephew, along with an extended autobiographical essay. Throughout the book, Baldwin writes with insight and compassion about the complexities of race in the United States.

Baldwin writes of his spiritual crisis as a teenager--a crisis which led to his career as a youth minister in an African-American Christian church. He writes bitterly of his ultimate disillusionment with the emptiness and hypocrisy he found in the church. Baldwin also writes of his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, the fiery leader of the Nation of Islam sect and mentor to controversial Black leader Malcolm X.

Baldwin's testament is a harsh critique of 20th century Christendom. Reflecting upon the rise of the Nazis in one of the world's most "Christian" nations, Baldwin declares, "From my own point of view, the fact of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete forever any question of Christian superiority, except in technological terms."

"The Fire Next time" is both an illuminating historical document of a turbulent era, and a superb piece of literary craftsmanship. All those interested in the art of nonfiction prose should take time to experience Baldwin's mastery of the medium. But even more importantly, we should all take time to consider his ideas on race, on religion, on prejudice, and on hope.

Rating:
Summary: Perspective Determines Change
Review: Originally published in 1963, James Baldwin's, "The Fire Next Time", is an indicator of what society was like as many viewed it, and forces questions about the degree of change that has happened since he originally wrote the work. The position or the perspective of the reader, will greatly affect how each reader reacts. One issue that I do not believe can be doubted is that this is a powerful, and passionate book, written and published at a time the Author risked all manner of hatred and violence upon him. Published when Mr. Baldwin was 39, the book is not the rose colored view of youth, nor the writing with an entire lifetime to reflect upon. It does not suffer from the first, nor does it fall short do to the latter. It is writing that will elicit powerful emotions by all those who read it.

Great change for the better has taken place. Former Joint Chief Of Staff Colin Powell will soon occupy the most powerful post ever held by a person of color in this Country's History. This was probably unmanageable in 1963. However this example does not represent the state of change in our Society. As an argument for how much change has taken place for the better between the races, a person pointed out to me the march on the anniversary of the sick events in Selma Alabama, and the lack of any violence. My feeling was that if the President Of The United States had made the same march with the same people in 1965, as the President did recently, the violence would surely have been different. The participation of The President and all that surround him tend to minimize Civil Rights abuse in his presence.

There is no definitive measure of how much change has taken place, who is responsible, and who if anyone is to blame. The ease with which "The Race Card" is played by individuals of any color, at any level of our Country may not measure change, but it certainly does indicate that whatever change is needed is not yet completed.

A very powerful work about a conflict that still occupies too much time as an issue in our Nation. This book is one man's views, and his shared personal experiences. He writing is not the final word, but after 38 years, the fact that his work and his thoughts are still relevant, speaks for the work and the man who wrote it.