Overview - This is a book Eddie Glaude wrote in reflection of where America is as a country post the presidency of Donald Trump. This book is a juxtaposition of what will help heal our country after the presidency of Trump with a statement from James Baldwin where he says, “we must begin again” (this is not the quote in its entirety). James Baldwin one of the foremost writers in history, gained fame during the Civil Rights movement where he wrote stirring essays on race, politics and the effects of being black in America, as well as the effects of being white. This namely is one element that makes Baldwin so captivating, his willingness to discuss the other side of racism for what it does to the mind, the seed it plants and how that seed erodes a human from the inside. Turning them into something ghastly and grotesque as the horrors of Jim Crow and American racism detail. James Baldwin's statement of “Begin again” references the affairs of this nation during the Civil Rights period and in order to calm the tension and agitation from black people and help whites find their humanity Baldwin suggest we must “begin again”. In Christianity a person is granted baptism the holy water washing away their sins, here Baldwin wants to acknowledge our past but move forward in a new way where respect takes the lead and no one’s humanity has to be questioned or be put in danger. Eddie Glaude uses this statement to reintroduce the audience to an old theme taking us on a journey of the life of Baldwin and his works while laying the foundation in thought and message as a pathway for how we can reengage with each other in what is a country split down the middle post Trump.
Theme – In order to move forward after turmoil and uncertainty one must Begin again.
Biggest takeaway – Eddie Glaude discusses something in this book I find absolutely fascinating. He tells a story of how James Baldwin was in Paris and saw a picture of a young girl integrating a school in Charlotte, NC. A small young black girl with books in hand led by police, flanked by angry white faces. This was the still photo Baldwin saw in Paris which prompted him to come back to the United Sates and reengage with the political landscape during the Civil Rights Movement. Glaude then begins to explain Baldwin was mistaken in this writing. The time the photo was taken and the time when Baldwin eventually came back to the United States didn’t add up. In one of his essays Baldwin actually sits down with the girls parents and the young girl and they discuss the integration, the school and other options for schooling which may be safer than integration at the time. Muddling the time of events even more.
Glaude introduces the idea of how trauma changes the way we remember events. Trauma warps and bends things in our memory. A psychiatrist in the book details how changing events in our memory help us cope with things that may have been too much for us to process at the time. This reminded me of something a bit off when I was reading a Baldwin essay some years ago. In the essay he was in LA on a sunny day in a rented house writing the screenplay for a Malcolm X movie funded by a movie studio. He brought his family and while writing at the pool of the house enjoying the day he gets a phone call. His sister goes into the house to answer the phone and comes back with a face of blankness and tremor. She informs the cheerful Baldwin that Martin Luther King was shot and killed. The essay talks about his initial shock and numbness then details the realization that writing the movie couldn’t proceed (which upset the studio). The essay jumps to him being at the funeral where the likes of Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and Jesse Jackson can be seen along with many other prominent figures at the time. He says in the essay he didn’t cry until he went outside where there was a sea of black faces dressed in black and completely silent.
Baldwin said in the essay “it was the silence that undid me”. The pace of the writing in the essay was a bit unusual, Baldwin an exceptional writer and sensitive man he seemed to be skipping over key points of despair, anxiety and anger which must’ve arisen in the writing of the essay. He almost glossed over the event in terms. This strikes me as trauma where Baldwin had to write a movie about of one dead friend in Malcolm X and bury another one MLK just as quickly. America had forced Baldwin to move to Paris for years to escape the powder keg brewing of racial tension ready to explode, only to come back to more ripping and twisting of the soul. America had showed the ugly side of its disease of racism time and time again, and the consumption of so much hatred can only produce an anxious, bitter, tired people, backed into a corner where the only choice was to fight. But for some reason black people chose to fight with love over violence, peace over chaos and offered the hope of a new beginning together rather than settle for the enraged tension of being separate.
The hope Baldwin and many others found to continue pressing forward in the mist of immense reason to lie down your life just to get some revenge; is a message of character I am not sure volumes of books could express. The mental toll, toil and turmoil are effects of such repression of a deep-felt violent response which was held back by the power of grace which reaches up to the eternal. Every march, every nonviolent gesture, every compromise was a gift to a people who openly hate you. And though it saved so many and produced the world we have now with the mixing and intermingling of family and community. It takes an immense toll on the human mind.
Overall Satisfaction – 9.7/10 Amazing read with great pace.
Comments on the Author – This is my first of many visits to what Glaude has to share with the world. Great book.
コメント