First published 2020
Eddie Glaude argues that America faces another racial reckoning. The Black Lives Matter movement and Obama's promise of change met fierce resistance with Trump's election. His presidency brought Charlottesville and family separations at the border. These events mirror the backlash James Baldwin witnessed after the civil rights movement. Baldwin watched assassins kill Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Those murders transformed Baldwin from literary writer to political voice between 1963 and 1972. The change cost him professionally and personally. Glaude draws from newly discovered Baldwin interviews to trace this evolution. He weaves biography with history and memoir to examine current racial trauma. The book shows how Baldwin found renewed purpose despite crushing disappointment. Glaude follows Baldwin's example to confront difficult truths about American race relations. He offers Baldwin's journey as a guide through today's fractured political landscape.
Genres: history, american, african-american, political-science, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, personal-journey
Setting: Charlottesville, United States
Period: 1963-1972, 21st-century
272 pages · Hardcover · Crown/Random House/Penguin Random House LLC
Content warnings: racism