The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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Recommended: James Baldwin's writing style and how it keeps readers focused

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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 that blacks must learn to accept whites

but whites don't have to do the same. Even though he has these thoughts he is

not anti white. He understands that one day in this world whites and blacks

will have to come together and live as one in order to be successful as a

...

... middle of paper ...

...eading about a black man's options for work you learn how this is just

another huge mountain that they have to climb in their lives because of the fact

that they are black. 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.

Baldwin teaches the reader about it by creating a picture of what he had to

go through just because he was black. Some authors may have held back in

some of the teaching by not being as crude in their description but Baldwin

did not. 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. After getting through this book you really understand what

the black man had.

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