A review by mauricekofi
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

This deeply impactful novel contains lessons that Baldwin wrote for his time that persist into our modern era. As the saying goes "the more things change, the more they stay the same". American Christianity being more a basis of power, prejudice, discrimination, and frankly a weapon of white supremacy has lasted through the decades since Baldwin's death. The tip-toeing around the formative and revolutionary change to this nation's structure with white liberals and "progressives" continues to dominate political discussions of the left. And the right's continued and futile struggle to maintain white supremacy in its oldest and most barbaric forms has become more pointed and violent as they gasp they're final breath. The only thing that has changed since Baldwin's lessons and promises in "the fire next time" is that indeed Bobby Kennedy was correct. We did have a black president, just over the forty years he promised we would. What little has changed to satisfy the promises of "We the people" and all the victims produced by the government established in that great document.