LaTanya Richardson, Denzel Washington and Anika Noni Rose in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic Broadway play
A Raisin in the Sun (2014).
promise”; and prophesies that the community will “redeem
the promise.” (Howard-Pitney 8). Instead of predicting
redemption, however, in The Fire Next Time, Baldwin
warns what will happen to Black and White America alike if
we do not heed the signs of racial apocalypse. His title refers
to a Negro spiritual that contrasts the mercy of flood with the
punishment of fire, fire that would become literal in urban
centers just a few years following the text’s publication:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No water but the fire
next time.”
As incendiary as Baldwin’s work is, it also contains a
sophisticated redefinition of love. One of these moments
occurs early in The Fire Next Time when he tells his
15-year-old nephew that on the day of his birth, he was there
“to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever,
to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember
that: I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad
that day, too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped
trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none
of us would have survived.” (Baldwin 7). Here Baldwin
affirms the power of love for self, family, and community
as a bulwark against a hostile society. In a world where
Black lives did not matter, nurturing the promise of the
next generation was a courageous act. Just as Baldwin
reevaluates the definition and purpose of love, so
does he redefine pleasure and its transformative potential.
A few pages later, Baldwin critiques White Americans
who misunderstand the “sensuality” of Black musical
forms such as jazz and the blues. (Baldwin 42).
Baldwin asserts:
“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice
in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present
in all that one does, from the effort of loving to
the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for
America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread
again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless
foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And
I am not being frivolous, now, either. Something
very sinister happens to the people of a country
when they begin to distrust their own reactions as
deeply as they do here and become as joyless as
they have become.” (Baldwin 43).
Baldwin’s call to embrace the sensual beyond White
fantasies of “quivering dusky maidens or priapic black
studs” brings to mind Audre Lorde’s definition of the
erotic as the life force that is the source of every creative
act, “whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing
a poem, [or] examining an idea.” (Baldwin 43; Lorde
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