The Fire This Time

Kenan's latest, alternating memoir and commentary, is an intelligent homage to James Baldwin's celebrated 1963 The Fire Next Time, and an important book in its own right. Early on, an especially vibrant memory of his surrogate father's attempt-against all advice and odds-to remove the enormous pile of brush in the back of their lot becomes a powerful metaphor for the book's larger concern, overcoming racial division: ""the gradualness of it, the day-by-day, one-whack, one-bush, one-shovel-at-a-time nature of the work."" Proclaiming that ""positive news abounds,"" Kenan's examination of figures in the African-American community include the jubilant observation that emerging celebrities, as well as accomplished individuals like astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Sesame Street's Elmo (Kevin Clash) and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robin Givham are all famous in their own right, and ""little is made of their obvious, undeniable blackness."" Still, new challenges and setbacks lurk: hip hop and ""the ethos that has risen up around it,"" AIDS and a lack of voice and leadership in black churches, among others. Kenan poses many difficult questions, such as why the high school dropout rate among African-Americans is so high, why African-Americans pay higher mortgage rates and why CDC estimates say one in three black gay men are HIV positive, making this book a perfect catalyst for lively discussion, and a fine state-of-the-issues update on Baldwin's 45-year-old touchstone.