 First edition | |
| Editor | Jesmyn Ward |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Essays, poetry |
| Publisher | Scribner |
Publication date | August 2, 2016 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 288 |
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race is an essay and poetry collection edited by the American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2016. The title, The Fire This Time, alludes to James Baldwin's seminal 1963 text, The Fire Next Time . [1]
The Fire This Time is an anthology of 18 writers contributing essays and poetry to three movements entitled "Legacy", "Reckoning", and "Jubilee". [3] The writers include, Carol Anderson, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Young, Claudia Rankine, Garnette Cadogan, Mitchell S. Jackson, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel Jose Older, Emily Raboteau, Clint Smith, Isabel Wilkerson, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, and Honorée Jeffers.
In an interview with NPR, Ward shared that the urgency to put together such a book, specifically one which builds on the legacy of Baldwin's contributions to literature, was a newfound sense of change in the 2010s, specifically precipitated by police brutality in the United States:
I feel like there's a certain sense of mobilization now. People are not afraid to be activists, to be vocal. And I think back to my years in college and that wasn't the case. I was in college in the late '90s, early 2000s, and it didn't feel like now. It was muffled. It was definitely muffled. It didn't feel as sort of young people with sort of big ideas. Like it didn't feel like we had any sort of voice, or even a part in the conversation. And that's very different now. And I think it's a great thing. I think it's a wonderful thing. And it's part of what I wanted to tap into with the book.
Reviewing the collection for The New York Times , Jamil Smith described the anthology as, "deal[ing] with everything from the Charleston church shooting to OutKast’s influence to Rachel Dolezal’s chicanery, all through a black lens that is still too rare in literature and elsewhere. The pain of black life (and death) often inspires flowery verse, but every poem and essay in Ward’s volume remains grounded in a harsh reality that our nation, at large, refuses fully to confront. In the spirit of Baldwin’s centering of black experiences, they force everyone to see things our way." [4]
Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle , Imani Perry described Ward's collection as, "a composition made by someone who is as careful a reader as she is a writer. Ward is attuned to the spirit of this moment and she is its conductor, gifting insight to us all." [5] Dwight Garner particularly praised contributions by Ward, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Carol Anderson, Kevin Young, and Garnette Cadogan, saying their works are "[e]ach ... so alive with purpose, conviction and intellect that, upon finishing their contributions, you feel you must put this volume down and go walk around for a while." [6]
Kirkus Reviews called it an "insightful" and "important collection" with "Timely contributions to an urgent national conversation." [7] Publishers Weekly similarly stated that "Ward’s remarkable achievement is the gift of freshly minted perspectives on a tale that may seem old and twice-told. Readers in search of conversations about race in America should start here." [8]
Dwight Garner, for The New York Times called it a "powerful book". [9] Jamil Smith, also writing for The New York Times, said, of the book and its namesake derived from Baldwin, "It seeks not to repeatedly dig up Baldwin’s legacy, but to provide a model for contextualizing and building upon it so that, perhaps, the man can finally rest in peace. This volume has found a new generation to carry the weight". [4]
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. Baldwin was an influential public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.
James Campbell is a Scottish writer.
Robin Benway is an author of young adult fiction from Orange County, USA, most known for her novel Far from the Tree, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and a professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones and won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She also received a 2012 Alex Award for the story about familial love and community in facing Hurricane Katrina. She is the only woman and only African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. All of Ward's first three novels are set in the fictitious Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage. In her fourth novel, Let Us Descend, the main character Annis, perhaps inhabits an earlier Bois Sauvage when she is taken shackled from the Carolina coast and put to work on a Mississippi sugar plantation near New Orleans.
Celeste Headlee is an American radio journalist, author, public speaker, and co-host of the weekly series Retro Report on PBS. In her 20-year career in public radio, Headlee has served as the host of the Georgia Public Broadcasting program "On Second Thought" and co-host of the national morning news show The Takeaway. Before 2009, she was the Midwest Correspondent for NPR's Day to Day and the host of a weekly show on Detroit Public Radio. Headlee is the author of We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter.
Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir is an autobiography by American food personality Eddie Huang. It was published in 2013 by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House. The book relates Huang's early life and rise in the food celebrity scene in New York City, and his relationship with his Asian American background.
Agate Publishing is an independent small press book publisher based in Evanston, Illinois. The company, incorporated in 2002 with its first book published in 2003, was founded by current president Doug Seibold. At its inception, Agate was synonymous with its Bolden imprint, which published exclusively African-American literature, an interest of Seibold's and a product of his time working as executive editor for the defunct African-American publisher Noble Press.
Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science is the second volume of the autobiographical memoir by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It was published in English in September 2015.
Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It was written by Coates as a letter to his then-teenage son about his perception of what the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States are. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing his beliefs about what are the ways in which, to him, institutions like schools, the local police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to "disembody" black men and women.
A Strangeness in My Mind is a 2014 novel by Orhan Pamuk. It is the author's ninth novel. Knopf Doubleday published the English translation by Ekin Oklap in the U.S., while Faber & Faber published the English version in the UK.
Salvage the Bones is the second novel by American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Bloomsbury in 2011. The novel explores the plight of a working-class African-American family in Mississippi as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina and follows them through the aftermath of the storm.
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an American essayist. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2018 for her profile of white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, as well as a National Magazine Award. She was also a National Magazine Award finalist in 2014 for her profile of elusive comedian Dave Chappelle. Her first book, The Explainers and the Explorers, is forthcoming from Random House.
My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir is a memoir by cookbook author and food historian Jessica B. Harris, particularly describing on her life and friendships with major black writers including James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison in New York City in the 1970s.
Men We Reaped is a memoir by the African-American writer Jesmyn Ward. The book was published by Bloomsbury in 2013. The memoir focuses on Ward's own personal history and the deaths of five Black men in her life over a four-year span between 2000 and 2004. Men We Reaped won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction.
Sing, Unburied, Sing is the third novel by the American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2017. It focuses on a family in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017.
Where the Line Bleeds is the debut novel by American writer Jesmyn Ward. It was published in 2008 by Agate Publishing.
The Mars Room is a 2018 novel by American author Rachel Kushner. The book was released on May 1, 2018 through Scribner. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. On November 5, 2018, it received the 2018 Prix Médicis Étranger. The title also received a Gold Medal for Fiction from the California Book Awards.
The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by Random House under its One World imprint. It is a surrealist story set in the pre-Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and, late in the novel, is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction". This power is based in the power of memory and storytelling and can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways.
How to Be an Antiracist is a 2019 nonfiction book by American author and historian Ibram X. Kendi, which combines social commentary and memoir. It was published by One World, an imprint of Random House. The book discusses concepts of racism and Kendi's proposals for anti-racist individual actions and systemic changes.
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year is a nonfiction book written by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker. It was published by Penguin Press in 2021 and was a New York Times bestseller. I Alone Can Fix It is a follow-up to the two authors' 2020 book A Very Stable Genius and covers Donald Trump's last year in office as president of the United States. As David Smith of The Guardian newspaper pointed out, "both titles are direct Trump quotations loaded with irony." The authors interviewed 140 people for their material, including a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Trump himself. The book has generally received positive reviews by book critics.
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