The Fire This Time

About this book

James Baldwins The Fire Next Time was one of the essential books of the sixties and one of the most galvanizing statements of the American civil rights movement. Now in the wake of Hurricane Katrina with a new generation of Americans confronting what Baldwin called our "racial nightmare " acclaimed writer Randall Kenan asks: How far have we come? Combining elements of memoir and commentary Kenans critical eye ranges from his childhood to the present to observe that while there have been dramatic advances some old issues have combined with new ones to bedevil us: Nigger has become a hip usage; the African-Americans that have finally attained prominent political positions are more often than not arch-conservatives; the Christian and Muslim religions so central to the civil rights movement have become more intolerant while the stirring spiritual music that inspired it has been replaced by an aggressive form of hip-hop. Starting with W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. Kenan expands the discussion to include many of todays most powerful personalities such as Oprah Winfrey O. J. Simpson Clarence Thomas Rodney King Sean Puffy Combs George Foreman and Barack Obama. Published to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of James Baldwins epochal work this homage by novelist essayist and Baldwin biographer Kenan is itself a piercing consideration of the times and an impassioned call to transcend them.