In these brilliant and stirring pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin as he mixes biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews—with history, memoir, and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of Black resistance and white retrenchment. As Glaude bears witness to the difficult truth of racism’s continued grip on the national soul, Begin Again is a searing exploration of the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

“Not only is Baldwin brought rushing forth from the page, with all the beauty of his prose and complexity of his thought, but Glaude’s voice joins him with a force and clarity of its own. . . . Baldwin and Glaude offer us a path forward that is both exceedingly difficult and genuinely hopeful.” ~ The Post and Courier