Book Review: The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward
After reading Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (my review), I was eager to read this collection of essays and poems curated by Jesmyn Ward in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the ensuing national unrest. Some of the pieces directly address police violence against Black people, others address other forms of institutionalized racism, and others share the current perspectives or experiences of Black Americans.
I’ve recently resolved to read more narratives written by Black writers. Regardless of the type of narrative (fiction, nonfiction, biography, essay, poetry), I feel the need to educate myself by honoring the painstaking work that’s already been done to put these narratives out into the world. This collection was a powerful way to engage with a variety of stories written by Black writers in response to the pain of pervasive, deadly, undeniable racism.
One of the first stories, written by Wendy S. Walters, was about the writer’s experience in researching the history of slavery in New England — a history that is both deeply personal and estranged from the writer through the rewriting of history by White America. I’ve recently been exploring my own racial history, suddenly gripped by a hunger to know from whence I came. My stomach drops when imagining what it would be like to know that this history was systematically erased and edited, precisely to discourage its acknowledgment and create the conditions of racism that killed George Floyd.
I’ll be reading a novel by Ward soon — I’m curious to see another narrative more directly shaped by her hand.
