Call and Response with James Baldwin : Randall Kenan’s The Fire This Time

Abstract

This article examines how Randall Kenan’s The Fire This Time (2007) creates a dialogue using James Baldwin’s words. Baldwin often begins his essays by discussing his background and sharing his emotional responses to personal struggles, illustrating the complexity of African American racial identity. Kenan follows Baldwin’s confessional narrative style in The Fire This Time to reflect on his own life through Baldwin’s words, offering insight into the African American male experience in the twenty-first century. This article suggests that Kenan’s work shows how Baldwin’s emotionally charged narrative can be helpful for contemporary African American writers to describe their personal experiences and address broader issues of race.departmental bulletin pape