A review by mrspenningalovesbooks
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward
5.0
This is a powerful read. I highly recommend it. I hoped to hear more of Ward’s voice in it, but it’s a powerful collection of essays, letters, poems, and voices who speak to what it’s like to live in America with racism. The last section brought me to tears, realizing what parents go through in the conversations they are forced to have with their children. That needs to change, and it can only change when Americans see lenses like these to shed light on the horrors that happen every day in America.
“Every journey is a crisis, a turning point, a shedding of myths, and mine began with the gnawing certainty that something did not add up. And in a way, this journey never ends, but in another sense, it ends where all great roads lead: to the discovery of voice.”
“The truth is I don’t want my daughters to grow up as I did, terrified of the country and the world they live in. But is it irresponsible of me to not alert them to the potentially life-altering, or even life-ending horrors they might face as young block women?”
“Every journey is a crisis, a turning point, a shedding of myths, and mine began with the gnawing certainty that something did not add up. And in a way, this journey never ends, but in another sense, it ends where all great roads lead: to the discovery of voice.”
“The truth is I don’t want my daughters to grow up as I did, terrified of the country and the world they live in. But is it irresponsible of me to not alert them to the potentially life-altering, or even life-ending horrors they might face as young block women?”