Review of Collected Essays of James Baldwin edited by Toni Morrison. When I was an undergraduate at Marshall University I read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, sometimes referred to as “Down at the Cross,” in a sociology class. This essay is included in this collection. Over the years, I read a few more of Baldwin’s essays and recently watched the award winning documentary about Baldwin entitled “I Am Not Your Negro.” Baldwin was one of the major intellectual voices of the civil rights era. He was a novelist, playwright, an essayist, poet, and activist. I decided to read through this collection, more than 800 pages in small print, of his essays to explore the wide range of his commentaries. While the focus of most of his essays is on the race, social justice, and power structures in America, he also focuses on African-American history, human rights, exiles, religion, black masculinity, the importance of literature and the arts, and homosexuality. I admit that this collection of his essays may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Baldwin can put more substance in one sentence than most authors can in an entire paragraph and he is what I call intellectually blunt in his commentary on race. For example, in his essay "The American Dream and the American Negro," he states that, “It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace, and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you.”
Baldwin's essays still resonate and speak truth to power in America today and I highly recommend that you read them.
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