Impact of Fire Next Time The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is a powerful book. It fanned the flames of the civil rights movement and is a staple of African-American literature. It is a testament to black culture and issues that peaked in the mid-20th century. We come out of the book feeling three things. The first is a heightened sense of awareness about growing up in Harlem. The second is a new perspective for interpreting the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. The third is respect for Baldwin as a writer and critical thinker. Baldwin grew up in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. He draws on many of his childhood experiences as a backdrop for the contemporary ideas he addresses in The Fire Next Time. Baldwin writes: The wages of sin were visible everywhere, in every wine- and urine-stained hallway, in every ambulance ring, in every scar on the faces of pimps and their whores, in every helpless newborn brought in at the hospital. this danger, in every knife and gun fight on the Aven...