For the first time this year, I decided to purposefully read for Black History Month. I recently watched the I Am Not Your Negro documentary on PBS and loved the words and thoughts of James Baldwin so The Fire Next Time was an obvious next step. And though this small collection is just over 100 pages long, it took me a while to get through because I reread almost every passage.
Now, I could sit here and copy out a host of meaningful quotes or you all could just go and pick this one up. I think each reader will get something different out of it. You may connect with some of the same parts that I did, ones that speak as much to the institutionalized racism of today as they did to that in the early 1960s. You may nod your head as Baldwin speaks about the failings of religions in America. Your heart may also ache as you think about the past 50 years when we could have made so much more progress.
Today, I'll pick up Jesmyn Ward's The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race from the library and keep learning.
Lost in thought,
K
Hey! This is today's Daily Deal on Audible - 99 cents!
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to do this one on audio but my library didn't have it.
DeleteI've never read anything by Baldwin, but he's sure written a lot!
ReplyDeleteHe has! This one is a good place to start because it's so short. The documentary was also fantastic and was simply his words over video. I caught it on PBS.
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