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Published to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of James Baldwin?s epochal work, this homage by novelist, essayist, and Baldwin biographer Kenan is itself a piercing consideration of the times, and an impassioned call to transcend them.
Melville House
July 2007
On Sale: June 28, 2007
149 pages
ISBN: 1933633247
EAN: 9781933633244
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
James Baldwin’s THE FIRE NEXT TIME was one of the essential
books of the sixties, and one of the most galvanizing
statements of the American civil rights movement.
Now, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with a new
generation of Americans confronting what Baldwin called our
“racial nightmare,” acclaimed writer Randall Kenan asks: How
far have we come?
Combining elements of memoir and commentary, Kenan’s
critical eye ranges from his childhood to the present to
observe that, while there have been dramatic advances, some
old issues have combined with new ones to bedevil us:
“Nigger” has become a hip usage; the African-Americans that
have finally attained prominent political positions are,
more often than not, arch-conservatives; the Christian and
Muslim religions so central to the civil rights movement
have become more intolerant, while the stirring spiritual
music that inspired it has been replaced by an aggressive
form of hip-hop.
Starting with W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King,
Jr., Kenan expands the discussion to include many of today’s
most powerful personalities, such as Oprah Winfrey, O. J.
Simpson, Clarence Thomas, Rodney King, Sean “Puffy” Combs,
George Foreman, and Barack Obama.
Published to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of James
Baldwin’s epochal work, this homage by novelist, essayist,
and Baldwin biographer Kenan is itself a piercing
consideration of the times, and an impassioned call to
transcend them.
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