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The Fire This Time
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 confronting what Baldwin called a “racial nightmare”, acclaimed writer Randall Kenan asks: How far have we come?
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, Rodney King, George Foreman and Barack Obama.
Combining elements of memoir and commentary, this homage is a piercing consideration of the times, and an impassioned call to transcend them.
Randall Kenan is the author of several books including the biography James Baldwin: American Writer and the novel A Visitation of Spirits. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and numerous other prizes. He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Now, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with a new generation confronting what Baldwin called a “racial nightmare”, acclaimed writer Randall Kenan asks: How far have we come?
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, Rodney King, George Foreman and Barack Obama.
Combining elements of memoir and commentary, this homage is a piercing consideration of the times, and an impassioned call to transcend them.
Randall Kenan is the author of several books including the biography James Baldwin: American Writer and the novel A Visitation of Spirits. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and numerous other prizes. He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
152 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
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About the author
Randall Kenan
25 books272 followersRandall Kenan's first novel, A Visitation of Spirits was published by Grove Press in 1989; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, was published in 1992 by Harcourt, Brace. That collection was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was among The New York Times Notable Books of 1992. He was also the author of a young adult biography of James Baldwin (1993), and wrote the text for Norman Mauskoff=s book of photographs, A Time Not Here: The Mississippi Delta (1997). Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999, and was nominated for the Southern Book Award.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1963, and spent his childhood in Chinquapin, North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. in English in 1985. From 1985 to 1989 he worked on the editorial staff of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, publishers. In 1989 he began teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. He was the first William Blackburn Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University in the fall of 1994, and the Edourd Morot-Sir Visiting Professor of Creating Writing at his alma mater in 1995. He was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford (1997-98),Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Memphis, and held the Lehman-Brady Professorship at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He has also taught urban literature at Vassar College.
He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and was the 1997 Rome Prize winner from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Kenan passed away in August 2020, just after his short story collection "If I Had Two Wings" was published.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1963, and spent his childhood in Chinquapin, North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. in English in 1985. From 1985 to 1989 he worked on the editorial staff of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, publishers. In 1989 he began teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. He was the first William Blackburn Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University in the fall of 1994, and the Edourd Morot-Sir Visiting Professor of Creating Writing at his alma mater in 1995. He was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford (1997-98),Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Memphis, and held the Lehman-Brady Professorship at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He has also taught urban literature at Vassar College.
He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and was the 1997 Rome Prize winner from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Kenan passed away in August 2020, just after his short story collection "If I Had Two Wings" was published.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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November 7, 2015Finishing this rounds out my trio of reading letters/essays about race in America:
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)
The Fire This Time by Randall Kenan (2007)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
I have to say that this book resonated the most with me of the three. Perhaps it is because the author & I are closest in age/time growing up, perhaps it is that we both spent part of our childhoods in rural North Carolina (he lived there; I had extended family that lived there & spent a good bit of time there as I grew up), perhaps it is that we have similar news/cultural/social references (being from the same generation).
I've found all three books to be intensely personal & hard to rate. They have stretched my brain & my heart, my soul too. Simply because of something called race, they have lived & experienced a different life than I have; fortunately, they have shared their experiences, thoughts, & feelings on paper. There is a lot to think about here in these letters & essays, especially in light of all our race-related killings, riots, protests, & crimes in this 'modern' day & age of 2015. We've come a long way, yet have an awfully long way to go too. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Kenan, & Mr. Coates.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)
The Fire This Time by Randall Kenan (2007)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
I have to say that this book resonated the most with me of the three. Perhaps it is because the author & I are closest in age/time growing up, perhaps it is that we both spent part of our childhoods in rural North Carolina (he lived there; I had extended family that lived there & spent a good bit of time there as I grew up), perhaps it is that we have similar news/cultural/social references (being from the same generation).
I've found all three books to be intensely personal & hard to rate. They have stretched my brain & my heart, my soul too. Simply because of something called race, they have lived & experienced a different life than I have; fortunately, they have shared their experiences, thoughts, & feelings on paper. There is a lot to think about here in these letters & essays, especially in light of all our race-related killings, riots, protests, & crimes in this 'modern' day & age of 2015. We've come a long way, yet have an awfully long way to go too. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Kenan, & Mr. Coates.
June 22, 2011
I bought this book because I have recently been doing some research on James Baldwin. It is an interesting book on the present United States. Still, I couldn't relate to the tendency of unification which Randall Kenan seems to argue. On the one hand, there is great diversity and otherness in American culture, on the other hand, he suggests there is no 'real' difference because of similar religious beliefs. (Perhaps it's my fault, and I don't have confidence in mankind.)
There is an effort in going to the roots of African American culture and relating the history to the present and to personal memories. Associating different levels of experience is what makes great essays. Sometimes I could believe him, sometimes it seemed too constructed like, wait, I have another anecdote to tell you.
It is a nice, short book and an interesting document of American mentality.
There is an effort in going to the roots of African American culture and relating the history to the present and to personal memories. Associating different levels of experience is what makes great essays. Sometimes I could believe him, sometimes it seemed too constructed like, wait, I have another anecdote to tell you.
It is a nice, short book and an interesting document of American mentality.
February 12, 2008
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.
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.
January 10, 2008
He writes with the lucid prose that would evoke comparisons to...James Baldwin. He raises all the right questions but sometimes doesn't complete the cycle, and lets go right before the hook is sunk. All in all, a very good starting point for the "where do we go from here," thought process.
November 17, 2007
A terrific book.
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February 17, 2012An excellent mix of cultural criticism and memoir (maybe my new favorite kind of writing). I think the mantle can truly be passed on to Kenan from James Baldwin.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews