Description
Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when
America is being called to do the same.”—Time
James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to
confront its lies about race. What can we learn from his struggle in our own moment?
One of the Best Books of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune One of
Esquire’s Best Biographies of All Time Winner of the Stowe Prize Shortlisted for the Goddard
Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses
abdication, one begins again.”—James Baldwin
Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with
America’s ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin’s
“after times,” argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s
call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our
moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the
ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.
In these brilliant and stirring pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin as he mixes
biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews—with history, memoir,
and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of Black resistance
and white retrenchment. As Glaude bears witness to the difficult truth of racism’s continued
grip on the national soul, Begin Again is a searing exploration of the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.
Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude
