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the fire next time

Entertainment, It's Lit

The Essential James Baldwin Reading List

In honor of the seminal, celebrated and misunderstood author's 100th birthday, check out these late summer must-reads.

By

Angela Johnson

Published

August 4, 2024
Entertainment, It's Lit

PageTurners: In Both Fiction and Nonfiction, This Week’s Authors and Characters Play ‘Make Believe’

We aren't the only critics to describe Percival Everett's novel The Trees as 'page turning'; James Baldwin's prophetic essays are now available in paperback.

By

Bella Morais

Published

September 22, 2021
Entertainment, Movies

Sundance 2021: A List of Black Movies to Watch While You’re in the (Virtual) White Mountains

I’m salty. As The Root’s Staff entertainment writer, one of the most exciting aspects of my job is being able to travel to a lot of cool places. In fact, the Sundance Film Festival typically kicks off the year of traveling shenanigans within my beat. In 2020, I flew to Park City, Utah to cover…

By

Tonja Renée Stidhum

Published

January 8, 2021
Culture

28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 18: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Publisher Synopsis: A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Timegalvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal…

By

Panama Jackson

Published

February 18, 2019
Very Smart Brothas

I'm Reading James Baldwin For The First Time And I'm Falling In Love With His Work

As a book-loving Black literary homothug who writes openly about life, sexuality, society, and the innumerable consequences and byproducts of White Terribleness and the absence of Teen Summit on post-Y2K childhood development (hint: they’re doomed), Sir James Baldwin has always occupied a peculiar space in my world. I’ve always known that his work was important…

By

Alexander Hardy

Published

January 13, 2016