Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own is a non-fiction book by Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a Princeton University professor specializing in race and religion in the US. The title gestures to a passage in James Baldwin’s last novel, Just Above My Head (1979), which stresses the importance of new beginnings in the quest to rebuild the US as a truly multiracial democracy. A New York Times bestseller, Begin Again combines elements of history, biography, literary criticism, and memoir, presenting Baldwin’s observations on race as salient to American society today. Glaude’s direct prose makes the nation’s race problem accessible without glossing over its complexity. This guide refers to the first edition published in 2020 by Penguin Random House.

The Introduction describes the book’s origins and lays out its main thesis: Insidious views of race in America continue to frustrate efforts to achieve equality.

Chapter 1 is about two concepts: “the lie” and the “after times.” The lie is the idea that White people matter more than racial minorities, while the after times are transitional periods in US history that present opportunities for change, such as the post-civil rights years and the current era.

Chapter 2 focuses on the notion of bearing witness. The US has yet to confront its racism honestly, choosing instead to minimize the issue and shift the blame to fringe actors. Only by confronting slavery and its legacy directly can the country put an end to the lie.

Chapter 3 emphasizes the various obstacles hindering the country’s transformation—most notably, White America’s commitment to maintaining its own myths and willingness to protect its identity at all costs.

Chapter 4 explores the moral question of who Americans take themselves to be, placing the problem of racism at the feet of White America.

Drawing on Baldwin’s ideas about exile, Chapter 5 discusses the concept of a physical and metaphorical elsewhere—a space to recharge before reentering the fight for racial justice.

Chapter 6 centers on the ruinous state of the country due to the broken promises of the past. Glaude reveals that he not only refused to vote for Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but also encouraged voters in non-swing states to leave their ballots blank to push the Democratic Party to act on racial issues.

Chapter 7 stresses the importance of examining the values and commitments that shaped America’s self-understanding, with the aim of reimagining and recreating the future. The book concludes with an appeal to those who want to build a better country. The nation is at a crossroads: Americans must make a choice to accept racism or do the work necessary to become a truly multiracial democracy.