The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin · 1963
Two essays: one a letter to his nephew, one a long meditation on race, religion, and America. Together they constitute the most urgent American political writing of the century. Published six months before the March on Washington. Still burning.
The case against
Prophecy is the mode, and prophecy doesn't argue; it declaims. The long second essay lingers over dinner with Elijah Muhammad, reportage circling the Nation of Islam without quite landing, and the cure Baldwin finally offers, that the relatively conscious few must achieve our country through love, is a sermon where you may have wanted a politics.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
