From the start, he lays out the circumstances his nephew is forced to grow up in, speaking of his country and countrymen as people who “have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to admit it.”īaldwin points out the crime and then the ignorance that allow crimes to continue unnoticed. Published in 1963, Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” contains two essays: “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind.” In the former letter, which acknowledges the 100th anniversary of the supposed emancipation, he advises his nephew and namesake on surviving in a loveless, racist world. His voice is now more pertinent than ever as we stumble through yet another civil rights crisis, unguided and unsupported by majority government officials. In recent years, his voice has resurfaced as a narrator for the civil rights effort that has not ended, only transformed. He emerged as a writer from Harlem: a voice for the people, a chronicler of the wreck that was the 1960s.
Reading James Baldwin is always a good idea, but lately, his words have proved to be a lifeline for a new era.
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