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Begin again : James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own / Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Crown, 2021Edition: Crown Trade paperback editionDescription: xxix, 252 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0525575332
  • 9780525575337
  • 9780525575320
Other title:
  • James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 305.800973
Contents:
Introduction: Thinking with Jimmy -- The lie -- Witness -- The dangerous road -- The reckoning -- Elsewhere -- Ruins -- Begin again -- Conclusion: A new America -- A book club guide -- Excerpt from: Democracy in Black.
Summary: "Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again."--James Baldwin. We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in the after times, when the promise of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a racist president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. We have been here before: For James Baldwin, the after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair. In the story of Baldwin's crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography - drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews - with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude's endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America. -- From publisher
List(s) this item appears in: From_technical_unit | AC Books - Nov2024
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Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books Matheson Library American Corner American Corner Book Collection AC 305.800973 G552 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 163473

Includes index.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Includes book club guide (pages 241-243) and excerpt from Democracy in Black (pages 245-252).

Introduction: Thinking with Jimmy -- The lie -- Witness -- The dangerous road -- The reckoning -- Elsewhere -- Ruins -- Begin again -- Conclusion: A new America -- A book club guide -- Excerpt from: Democracy in Black.

"Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again."--James Baldwin. We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in the after times, when the promise of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a racist president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. We have been here before: For James Baldwin, the after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair. In the story of Baldwin's crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography - drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews - with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude's endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America. -- From publisher

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