Eddie S. Glaude Jr. - Begin Again: James Baldwins America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

In this searing, provocative, and ultimately hopeful book, Eddie Glaude Jr. takes us on a fascinating journey through the mind and heart of James Baldwin. But a parallel odyssey through Glaudes own formidable mind and generous heart unfolds as wellan odyssey that tells us much about the way we live now and how we might come to live if we could, to borrow a phrase of Lincolns, think anew and act anew. One need not agree with everything in these pages to learn much from them, and for Americans seeking to understand our past, our present, and the possible futures before us, Begin Again challenges, illuminates, and points us toward, if not a more perfect union, at least a more just one.

J ON M EACHAM , author of The Soul of America

Eddie Glaude is such a terrific writer. In Begin Again, as he wrestles with James Baldwins work and fraught relationship to the United States, Glaudes work is urgent, pained, and strangely hopeful. He is issuing a call to reckoning: not just with the dishonesty of Americas founding promises, but with the tolls that its intrinsic racism has taken on the artists and thinkers who have come before. Glaude reminds readers of the inescapability of struggle and of the responsibility of consciousness, making explicit how our history underpins our current political moment. Its a great book.

R EBECCA T RAISTER , author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Womens Anger

How often, amid the ongoing violence and division of our current chapter of American history, have I been made to recall not only the piercing brilliance of James Baldwin but also his discomfiting prescience? An old world is dying, he wrote in No Name in the Street, and a new one, kicking in the belly of its mother, time, announces that it is ready to be born. The magic of Begin Again is that it allows us to ponder Baldwin both in his perilous era and in our own. Remarkable, and remarkably relevant.

T RACY K . S MITH , Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Life on Mars

In this powerful and elegant book on James Baldwin, Eddie Glaude weaves together a biography, a meditation, a literary analysis, and a moral essay on America. Like Baldwins own essays and books, it is at times both loving and angry, challenging and uplifting, and always beautiful. Both Baldwin and this book speak directly to today.

W ALTER I SAACSON , author of Steve Jobs

Begin Again is a magnificent book filled with the type of passion, lyricism, and fire that James Baldwin commands and deserves. Eddie Glaude Jr. takes us on a unique and illuminating journey through Baldwins life and writings by both physically and philosophically following in his footsteps. In this phenomenal work, we are treated to a timeless and spellbinding conversation between two brilliant writers, thinkers, and active witnesses, addressing issuespast, present, and futurethat are necessary, urgent, and vital for our survival.

E DWIDGE D ANTICAT , author of Brother, Im Dying

Begin Again is an unparalleled masterpiece of social criticism. Glaude thinks alongside Americas finest essayist, matching the masters firepower, brilliance, courage, and sensitivity at every turn. He pushes, prods, and disrobes history, forcing us to face uncomfortable truths and insisting upon our better inheritances. Glaudes stunningly crafted proseincisive, vulnerable, and beautifulis as breathtaking as his brilliance. This book is precisely the witness we need for our treacherous times.

I MANI P ERRY , author of Breathe

In the marrow of Eddie Glaudes Begin Again is a rugged literary miracle. In evocative prose, Glaude showed me how we might use the unexceptional yet brutal nightmare of Trumpism to not simply better understand the work and life of James Baldwin, but how that discovery must lead us as people, not simply as a nation, to begin again and walk collectively toward actual liberation.

K IESE L AYMON , author of Heavy

In the midst of an ugly Trump regime and a beautiful Baldwin revival, Eddie Glaude has plunged to the profound depths and risen to the sublime heights of Baldwins prophetic challenge to our present-day crisis. This book is, undoubtedly, the best treatment we have of Baldwins genius and relevance. Glaudes masterpiece puts a smile on Baldwins face from the grave even as Baldwin weeps for us in this grim moment! With subtle brilliance and heartfelt tears, Glaude breaks bread with Baldwin in order to give us courage and hope!

C ORNEL W EST , author of Democracy Matters

I arrived in Heidelberg, Germany, on a hot Saturday morning the day after leaving Newark, New Jersey. This was the beginning of my stay at Heidelberg University as the 2018 recipient of the James W.C. Pennington Award. Born on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1809, Pennington escaped slavery at the age of eighteen, learned to read and write, and was the first black man to attend classes at Yale University. He went on to become a minister, and in 1849, the Heidelberg Faculty of Theology awarded him an honorary doctorate. It was the first time, I believe, that a European university bestowed such an academic honor on an African American. And here I was, a country boy from Moss Point, Mississippi, who wrote about religion and race in the United States, flying across the world to accept an honor named after Pennington at a university founded in 1386.

I met James, an American graduate student from a small town in Michigan who was studying at Heidelberg, as I checked into my apartment, House 2, no. 64. He was charged with getting me settled on my first day at the university. The elevator wasnt working, so we walked up three flights of stairs with three weeks worth of clothes in my suitcase. The apartment was small. I opened the door and immediately found myself in a kitchenette with the bathroom and shower right next to it. The stove had two burners. The oven was a microwave. Five steps in, I stood in my bedroom/living room/dining room. The bed doubled as a couch. Then I spotted my desk. Nothing else mattered after that.