Bookforum talks with Jesmyn Ward
James Baldwin's 1963 work, The Fire Next Time, with its forward-glancing title, was the call; The Fire This Time, a collection of essays and poems edited by Jesmyn Ward, is the response. Featuring the work of contemporary, mostly black writers, it finds a way to touch on many subjects.
August 2 would have been James Baldwin’s ninety-second birthday. Across the Internet, people celebrated by quoting his work, sometimes with just text, sometimes through memes, so much so that by early Tuesday morning, “James Baldwin” was trending on Twitter. But over the last few years, in our extended cultural moment of racism becoming tangible to more than those it affects, Baldwin—his ideas and forecast for this country—has resurfaced like a message in a bottle, the words he wrote always true, yet now eerily prescient.
His 1963 work, The Fire Next Time, with its forward-glancing title, was