The Fire Next Time grapples with major themes of race and racism, religion, and coming of age narratives broadly. Additionally, given Baldwin’s appeal, many author’s have used this text as a basis to write about race in a more contemporary setting. There are a number of both older and contemporary texts (books and essays) that would greatly complement this text, including other James Baldwin works.
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates, who has been compared to Baldwin, wrote this book—really a series of essays—as a letter to his young Black son. Similar to Baldwin’s letter to his nephew, “My Dungeon Shook,” Coates cautions his son about the ills of racism, tracing how it...
