List Price: $26.00 Details

Save: $9.16 (35%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Friday, December 30 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Thursday, December 29

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

[{"displayPrice":"$16.84","priceAmount":16.84,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"84","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"1fY8vjq%2B624IZL%2FoZSyvZ63dev%2B7NlvLMDHs4S8L3ty2mNP2a2zDM3zyJVMrJINGoVNuy2CyESCYBMbhwA4YDiakOrWw3P1eWAB94SAyC2oTiqB4r5vesnRCEq0ISIxoQp3sB4gg9ft9MclBQYu39a9Qdqd7nngwRr986%2B9SsTahF%2FRWu52b32AM4%2FNJAZKg","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$8.99","priceAmount":8.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DjtRedNaAAuKfS8v8eQb7D6%2FlCdxZJEiBkXfqVEGd96Nqq1OyMig3BjZQMGCg75nln2Uizrw9qRXtRXO66SHTDy1WADEXdIYN37YJ1gudmGkvj3jxzPQ2Ja8HNnaiX2ps2X3NVSIOI74NCgZxgqAxrMv%2FpkvjxcNMbhv4BHj%2BPoBMN59O4X0ZSHRl2XOLIWs","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$16.84 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

EB-BOOKS LLC

Details

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

EB-BOOKS LLC

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2023

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Friday, December 30 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Ex Libris B&C

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$16.85
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: DDV Sales and Resources LLC

Added

Not added

$18.99
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: Amazon.com

Added

Not added

$19.94
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Jesmyn Ward

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race Hardcover – August 2, 2016

by Jesmyn Ward (Author)

466 ratings

4.4 on Goodreads

8,521 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$16.84

$12.83

$1.34

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.39

$8.68

$2.06

Preloaded Digital Audio Player, Unabridged

"Please retry"

—

Enhance your purchase

The New York Times bestseller, these groundbreaking essays and poems about race—collected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her generation—are “thoughtful, searing, and at times, hopeful. The Fire This Time is vivid proof that words are important, because of their power to both cleanse and to clarify” (USA TODAY).

In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: “You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”

Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin’s words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation’s most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.

The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume.

In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin’s essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a “post-racial” society is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin’s “fire next time” is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about.

Contributors include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnette Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel Jose Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Scribner
Publication date

August 2, 2016
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.3 x 8.38 inches
ISBN-10

1501126342
ISBN-13

978-1501126345
Lexile measure

1230L
See all details

Frequently bought together

+
+

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

by Jesmyn Ward Hardcover
$16.84
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by EB-BOOKS LLC and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
Get it as soon as Friday, Dec 30
by James Baldwin Paperback
$6.49
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Friday, Dec 23
by Ta-Nehisi Coates Hardcover
$12.42
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Thursday, Dec 22

James Baldwin
9,111
Paperback
139 offers from $1.01
James Baldwin
5,051
Paperback
67 offers from $6.19
Viet Thanh Nguyen
718
Paperback
Editors' pickBest Literature & Fiction
97 offers from $1.90
Jesmyn Ward
1,416
Paperback
Editors' pickBest Nonfiction
105 offers from $2.60
Jesmyn Ward
413
Paperback
56 offers from $2.50
Jesmyn Ward
3,852
Paperback
184 offers from $1.32

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] stirring anthology that takes more cues from Baldwin than just its title ... every poem and essay in Ward’s volume remains grounded in a harsh reality that our nation, at large, refuses fully to confront."
—The New York Times Book Review

"[A] powerful book ... alive with purpose, conviction and intellect."
—The New York Times

"With this gorgeous chorus — Ward has done the same [as her ancestors]: she has created a world, a space, the one she, herself, was seeking. A new type of belonging, a new place to belong, is exactly what she has given us."
—L.A. Review of Books

"[W]hat The Fire This Time does best is to affirm the power of literature and its capacity for reflection and imagination, to collectively acknowledge the need for a much larger conversation, to understand these split-second actions in present, past, and future tense, the way that stories impel us to do. This is a book that seeks to place the shock of our own times into historical context and, most importantly, to move these times forward."
—Vogue

"The Fire This Time is a powerful, rewarding read that gets to the heart of what it means to be black in America today."
—The Root

“A half century ago James Baldwin, the prophet in the American wilderness, delivered The Fire Next Time—as complex a reckoning with race, morality and human nature as we have seen. Jesmyn Ward has pulled together in this collection you now hold the incisive, sage, angry and deeply complex voices of a new generation, responding to many of the same questions that confronted us in 1963. To Baldwin's call we now have a choral response—one that should be read by every one of us committed to the cause of equality and freedom.”
—Jelani Cobb, historian

“In 1963, we were poised on a precipice, intellectually, spiritually, politically primed for the change we knew had to come. Now, some half-century later, we are again at the precipice. We are dismayed and disheartened to find ourselves here, aghast that the rules and players have changed but the game, somehow, is the same. What do we do, this post-Civil Rights generation, in the face of the same injustice, dressed in different clothes, coded in different laws? In The Fire This Time, a new generation of black writers speak with the ‘fierce urgency of now.’”
—Ayana Mathis, novelist

“Fires destroy things…burns them up…makes ashes for us all…But fires also keep us warm…give us a glow to sit by…to tell ancestry stories to the children against the rhythmic crackle of history…to make love to against the glow. The generation of segregations gave us The Fire Next Time…we broke down those walls…The generation after segregation gives us the water to mix with the ashes to build…something…anything all…in the words of Margaret Walker…our own. This is a book to pick up and tuck under our hearts to see what we can build.”
—Nikki Giovanni, poet

"Timely contributions to an urgent national conversation."
—Kirkus Reviews

"An absolutely indispensable anthology."
—Booklist (starred review)

"Ward's remarkable achievement is the gift of freshly minted perspectives on a tale that may seem old and twice-told. Readers in search of conversations about race in America should start here."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Groundbreaking."
—Library Journal

"Through her essays and poems about race, Jesmyn Ward's The Fire This Time acts as a response to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. Ward looks at the past, present, and future of America's notion of race, and the progress made from Baldwin's era up until now. Baldwin said that if we don't solve our country's problem of racial inequality, our society will be set ablaze, and Ward proves that that fire has already started."
—Popsugar

"Edited by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time is a collection of pieces by various authors on race in America, inspired by James Baldwin's 1963 book The Fire Next Time. Where were we then, where are we now, and where are we headed? Through its stunning essays and poems, this collection masterfully explores those questions and more."
—Buzzfeed

"In this searing anthology edited by two-time National Book Award winner Jesymn Ward, who dedicates the collection to Trayvon Martin, literary luminaries wrestle with what Ward calls “the ugly truths that plague us in this country.” Envisioned as a contemporary response to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, The Fire This Time assembles essays and poems from brilliant writers including Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, and Kevin Young, who dissect the historic legacy of structural racism in America, unpack the violent inequities of our contemporary moment, and envision a brighter future for people of color."
—Esquire

About the Author

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; 1st edition (August 2, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501126342
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501126345
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1230L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #897,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #552 in Censorship & Politics
- #3,083 in Discrimination & Racism
- #3,461 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)

Customer Reviews:
466 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jesmyn Ward

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Prize. She is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

Customer reviews

5 star		82%
4 star		13%
3 star		3%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Michelle

Still on My Mind

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2016

Verified Purchase

"The world is before you," I want to tell my daughters, "and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." --Edwidge Danticat "Message to My Daughters"

'The Fire This Time' is a timely, necessary collection of essays on the varied dimensions of Blackness in the contemporary U.S. Divided into three sections--legacy (the past), reckoning (the present), and jubilee (the future)--the compilation not only dedicates time to dissecting white rage, the sickness that has shaped the U.S. since its genesis, but also gives glimpses into the interior lives Black folk lead, the brilliance, the joy, and the creativity that blossoms in Black communities in spite of racial oppression. More than a few of the essays are reprints, but this doesn't take away from the distinctness of the overall project. My personal favorites were "'The Dear Pledges of Our Love': A Defense of Philis Wheatley's Husband" by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Da Art of Storytellin' (a Prequel)" by Kiese Laymon, and "Black and Blue" by Garnette Cadogan. Jeffers seeks to show what is lost when our knowledge of Black lives is wholly shaped by white hostility; Laymon writes a beautiful tribute to his grandmother and OutKast and shows some of the non-literary modes through which Black Southerners across generations have shared their voice; Cadogan gives a wonderful description of the aesthetic, social, and political dimensions of Black bodies walking in three very different cities, Kingston, New Orleans, and NYC.

Edwidge Danticat's words in the closing essay have remained with me: "I want to look happily forward. I want to be optimistic. I want to have a dream. I want to live in jubilee. I want my daughters to feel they have the power to at least try to chance things, even in a world that resists change with more strength than they have. I want to tell them they can overcome everything, if they are courageous, resilient, and brave...But the world keeps tripping me up. My certainty keeps flailing."

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Christopher Lord

A Worthy Sucessor to James Baldwin's ground-breaking work

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 8, 2016

Verified Purchase

James Baldwin is having a well-deserved moment, and Jesmyn Ward is gutsy to title her book so audaciously as to echo Baldwin's most famous essay.

To her credit, nearly every essay in this book lives up to the spirit of Baldwin with strong, evocative prose and, occasionally, poetry, from some of Ward's generation of fine, fine writers. I thought about naming those essays I liked best but am having a hard time, although Honore Fanzine Jeffers's work about Phillis Wheatley's husband and Edwidge Danticat's closing essay are both memorable, while Wendy Walters's reflection on the discovery of a slave graveyard and her haunting and ambivalent reaction to it may be the finest piece of the collection. The only essay that disappointed was Kevin Young's somewhat flippant take on the Rachel Dolezal situation; given the context of this book with its otherwise exceptional writing, I had hoped for something with greater insight into one of the more bizarre race-related stories of the past few years.

Although I consider myself a pretty well-read person, I had not heard of many of these contributors nor have I read much of their works. I am making my way through Baldwin, who must be the finest essayist on any topic in the second half of the twentieth century. Given what I have seen here, I think Ms. Ward has identified some of the finest writers in our new century.

I can see this book almost immediately becoming required reading on race studies, but it deserves the widest possible readership. And, when you buy it, pick up "The Fire Next Time" as well. Ms. Ward would want you to.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jessica Sullivan

Essential.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 29, 2016

Verified Purchase

A book like this is especially important right now. Amid the Black Lives Matter movement, the widespread national anthem protests and the recent election of a racist president, The Fire This Time digs deep into the legacy of racism in America and what it means to be black in the past, in the present and in the future.

Curated by National Book Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward and dedicated to Trayvon Martin, it’s an anthology divided into three parts: Legacy, Reckoning and Jubilee.

Each writer is tasked with examining what Ward calls “the ugly truths that plague us in this country.” The essays and poems contained within are deeply personal in nature, filled with sadness and hope.

White people in America (myself included, of course) can never truly understand what it’s like to endure unfathomable injustices based on the color of our skin. I believe that we have a responsibility to listen to black voices and become more empathetic and aware. The Fire This Time joins Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me as as an important work of non-fiction that can help us with that. Like Coates’ book, this one wasn’t written for us (white people), but we can all become better people by reading it.

42 people found this helpful

Helpful

Corey

Ok, Black Lives Matter. What else?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

I had high hopes for this piece. Though eloquently written with a depth that is hard to match and a courage that illuminates the sheer brainpower of the black intellectual community's sharpest minds, something felt like it was missing. I got the black lives matter and police brutality angle. The often told story about the history of anti-blackness and its searing imprint on our physical emotional and mental safety is easy to understand and of course the generational heritage of such trauma makes sense but something felt like it was missing! I would have loved to learn more about the freedom of walking and the connection of man to nature -- a gift so free and so simple -- and how our forfeiture collectively kills us. I wanted to hear more about our resilience through music and dance and the pronounced protest of the body amidst the unapologetic attacks on the spirit. I wanted to feel each writer's pain as they grappled with what to say to the next generation and what our hope could and should be. It felt like a fire this time is the same fire as the one last time but nothing more...

My true score is 3.8

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

A great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Absolutely love this book.

Jim KABLE

My Black Siblings - Brothers and Sisters - in the US

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on June 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

Things are similar to the matters written of in this book in a number of respects in Australia - towards people of difference - Indigenous - asylum-seekers. The tragedy is in both lands - police brutality and lack of accountability - protected by their largely Anglo-political fear-mongerers. And the fears of mothers and fathers when their daughters - and sons (especially) leave the house - to go to school or to play or to walk to the local store! Even for folk to be in their local church at Bible study - racist attacks are at every point.

In NYC in Harlem in late 2014 - having read Charles M Blow (opinion writer for the NY Times) - and his memoir: Fire Shut Up In My Bones - watching police pull over a car and have its occupants - two young men (Black) up against the car being frisked. I stood watching the scene as my wife and friends moved on - wondering if I should photograph the confrontation - aware that I was observing a profiling incident. During the same visit to NYC - staying in Bed-Stuy - taking a cross city bus to Bushwick to visit the sister and husband of a kinship connection in England. The sister was from Trinidad, her husband from Guyana. A daughter and a son - and her brother (met in England at a family wedding) and family - all in Florida - Fort Myers region. That same day - a shooting just a few blocks from their street -someone was killed - reports said it was drugs-related - maybe, maybe not. I recommend this book - most highly - and I thank everyone who has contributed to it. For helping Anglo-Australian me to understand just that much more...Long May You All Live - and yes, indeed #BlackLivesMatter!

One person found this helpful

See all reviews

Buy new: $16.84$16.84 FREE delivery: Friday, Dec 30 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon Sold by: EB-BOOKS LLC

Buy used: $8.99

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race Hardcover – August 2, 2016

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Jesmyn Ward

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$16.84

FREE delivery: Friday, Dec 30 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon

Sold by: EB-BOOKS LLC

Buy used:

$8.99