Book completed
Jan. 8th, 2021 03:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeThe Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin. This 1963 book consists of two essays - a letter to his nephew, which I imagine is what Ta-Nehisi Coates modeled Between the World and Me on, and a much longer essay on the Nation of Islam movement and what it takes for white and Black people to co-exist in America.
My favorite part was in the first essay. Baldwin is talking about how difficult his brother's life has been made by the conditions of Black people in America. He says, "...this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. ... it is not possible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."
My favorite part was in the first essay. Baldwin is talking about how difficult his brother's life has been made by the conditions of Black people in America. He says, "...this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. ... it is not possible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."