Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

“Whatever may have blocked your understanding of what we have tried to tell you of our suffering,” he wrote, “is dissolved by suffering, and we beg you to allow us to share your grief. As we know that in these trying days to come, you share our struggle, for our struggle is the same.”

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It was like Dr. King meets Henry James meets Malcolm X meets Freud.

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Reading Jimmy, then, requires much more than an encounter with one’s pain. It is a demanding practice: tracing his references (understanding his invocation of Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcel Proust, the blues, etc.), feeling his language (how he sits with the King James Bible, finds resources in Shakespeare, and revels in Black English), and tracking his insights across a wide array of work.

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Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.

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