This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends about Racism

Lemon opens the book with a letter to his nephew lamenting the way the world is and the need to fight complacency in the battle against racism. It’s an intimate, tender approach that has been used with more poignancy by Black intellectuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ta-Nehisi Coates, Imani Perry and Kiese Laymon … Baldwin has become the iconic shorthand and barometer for Black ethos, his work and identity forming a fundamental part of our culture. Lemon’s attempt to associate his work with the brilliance of Baldwin can only come up miniature. This Is the Fire is not up to the task of extending Baldwin’s legacy or vision. Ultimately, Lemon leaves me wondering who he’s speaking to—who his friends are in his subtitle. They seem to be mainly White people. That’s not shade, but it was something that sat with me as I read … This Is The Fire does all the right things: it taps into history, the present, the anger, the hope, the energy, the sickness, the people, the places, the familiar and the unfamiliar. But it leaves me wanting more.

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