At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible...

Provides a collection of Baldwin's essays on topics ranging from race relations in the United States--including an attack on William Faulkner for this ambivalent views about the segregated South--to the role of the writer in society, with personal accounts of such writers as Richard Wright and Norman Mailer. --From publisher description