Showing results for "James Baldwin" in Specific Demographics

James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice.

James Baldwin's breakthrough essay collection made him the voice of his generation. Ranging over Harlem in the 1940s, movies, novels, his preacher father and his experiences of Paris, they capture the complexity of black life at the dawn of the civil rights movement with effervescent wit and prophetic wisdom.

In this deeply personal book, Baldwin reflects on the experiences that shaped him as a writer and activist: from his childhood in Harlem to the deaths of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Exploring the visceral reality of life in the American South as well as Baldwin’s impressions of London, Paris and Hamburg, No Name in the Street grapples with the failed promises of global liberation movements in fearless, candid prose.

Once in a great while a book comes along that radically changes our understanding of a crucial political issue and helps to fuel a social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Lawyer and activist Michelle Alexander offers a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status, denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights movement.

La definizione di saggio per le opere non narrative di Baldwin è certamente impropria. Baldwin è un artista, prima di essere un intellettuale, e il suo appassionante confronto con la realtà americana è opera di uno scrittore. Fanno da legame le immagini, le intuizioni, le facce e la sequenza di emozioni e impressioni, piuttosto che l’organizzazione delle idee, perché Baldwin è sempre più impegnato, nei saggi come nei romanzi, a raccontare una storia. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1963, La prossima volta il fuoco di James Baldwin colpisce dritto al cuore della cosiddetta “questione nera”.