... is not one of lamenting the injustice of being born into injustice, but the responsibility that those born into such situations must take on. In the first of the two essays in "The Fire Next Time," is an epistle written to his nephew who is 14-years-old. He is writing it on a particularly important day in racial history ... , the 100th anniversary of the emancipation proclamation in which US President Abraham Lincoln declared that black slaves were now legally free. He makes it clear that such an exploration of race issues is not something Baldwin finds easy to express. He begins by writ...

• Word Count: 1135
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... a clerk in a lawyers' office. Deciding to become a parliamentary reporter, he taught himself shorthand at night, while continuing to work in the office. In 1828, during his sixteenth year, he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor's Commons Courts. For several years he alternated reporting, exploring the London streets, and reading avidly in London's libraries. Already devoted to the ... essays of Joseph Addison, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Jon, he now read the major nineteenth-century essayists: Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Thomas DeQuincey. At ...

• Word Count: 5240
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School