The Fire Next Time Characters & Character Analysis

The Fire Next Time Important People

James Baldwin

James Baldwin is the book's author, writing at a time in American social and literary history when the true depth and extent of the so-called "Negro problem" was beginning to become apparent. Biographical information at the end of the book indicates that by the time this book was published he had already written several novels and books of essays, as well as received several awards and fellowships. Biographical information contained in the novel portrays him as having grown up in Harlem, in the midst of that community's economic, spiritual and political poverty - a poverty he seems to have resisted, in various ways, all his life. The various forms of this resistance are portrayed throughout the book.

His active, personal resistance came first in the form of becoming a Christian preacher, a youthful stage of his life chronicled in Section 2, Part 1. The focus of his resistance broadened once...
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