The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin's book The fire Next Time opens up an entirely new world to most readers. It opens the reader to the harsh world of a black boy growing into a man in the poor city slums and all of the issues that a black man has to face. This book does more for the reader than any article published about the black's living in the poor cities in terms of exposure for the reader. The reason why it has this ability is how James Baldwin wrote it. He was able to express all of himself in the essay form with a storytelling technique. Together these two techniques combine to form a collection of essays on what blackness means in America. What makes this form of writing nice for the reader is that by combining many different essays you are able to learn about many different areas of a black man's life. In his collection of essays there is a light shined on the relationship between blacks and whites. Baldwin throughout the book discusses the idea that to be successful in the world that we live you have to live in a white world. This creates a problem because then you have blacks who want to be successful but the whites will not except them. Baldwin deconstructs the myths that surround blackness in America and sets out as a possibility t
A part of the book that he states this goes, "In short we, the black and white deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation-if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women". And you are truly able to see the life that one is exposed to in the slums of Harlem. Being black means that one is intended for a particular life, a life with several disappointing outcomes. Baldwin describes his own life growing up in Harlem. For a man to write this about his race makes you really understand what he is feeling and the power that he feels it with. At points I wish that he wasn't so graphic in his descriptions but looking back on the book as a whole it was a much better book then if he had left things out. "You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being". But on the contrary religion gave him no peace. Part of his book portrays this idea perfectly. Baldwin teaches the reader about it by creating a picture of what he had to go through just because he was black. This way of life is a brutal one as well. The Fire Next Time is a book that teaches one about the hidden world that no one wants to learn about- the poor slums of the city. An issue that the author brings up in the book is the work that a black man can do.
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