Brother Outsider: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Exile Literature

448 CLA JOURNAL Brother Outsider: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Exile Literature Kelly Walter Carney On the surface, the comparison between James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between theWorld and Me is straightforward, so much so that reviews of Coates’s book frequently begin by assuming the connection without pursuing it further (Kakutani). The two texts share many superficial commonalities: both are written in an epistolary form; both position themselves between the black community and the white reading public; both have ties to sophisticated scions of northeastern journalism (The New Yorker and The Atlantic); both are grounded in the authors’ experiences in black institutions such as the Christian church, the Nation of Islam and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.There are,of course,significant differences between the two works,the most significant of which is the fact that, although they diagnose the foundations of American racism similarly, they reach vastly different conclusions in response. Furthermore, Coates and Baldwin share an experience of exile and return; both writers have moved between France and the United States at regular intervals,a shift in perspective that merits further analysis. Both writers orient themselves to Black and white communities in similar ways, positioning themselves between these two groups and as exiles from the nation they comprise.Although it might be tempting to regard both men as expatriate social critics, this view is too reductive. In this paper, a close reading of The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me shows the writers as two men in search of community and connection, which is further considered through the expatriate context biography provides. The question of exile is complicated and re-examined through consideration of early twentieth century German ideas about the writer in exile and inner emigration, resulting in a complex view of the writer’s relationship to society. This re-contextualization of The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me provides a new perspective on questions of community, inclusion, and national myth. CONNECTING WITH THE BLACK COMMUNITY “To accept … one’s history … is learning how to use it” (Baldwin 81). The epistolary elements of Baldwin’s text are part of its power. Addressed to his nephew, The Fire Next Time refers to the common experiences that they share, including life in Harlem; their love for specific family members, particularly Baldwin’s brother (Baldwin 4-5); and the protective love the family feels for Big James, the nephew, love that began at the moment of his birth: “…here you CLA JOURNAL 449 Brother Outsider: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Exile Literature were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world…. (I)f we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived” (6-7). Similarly, Coates refers to family members he and his son both know, including Coates’s parents and wife; his description of the fierceness of familial love echoes Baldwin’s: “You are all we have, and you come to us endangered”(82). Coates and Baldwin establish their grounds for writing up front: love–protective, anxious, and intense love. The nephew and son stand in for young Black men everywhere who need to hear that they are loved, despite the dangers of their world. Baldwin describes the Harlem of his youth as a frightening place, one which threatens him with dissipation and destruction. Recognizing his peril, he becomes a Christian preacher. He identifies this choice as “a ‘thing,’ a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way”(24). One might as well choose the church as anything else. Although he is ultimately disillusioned with the church and leaves Harlem, he remembers the strength that he has learned from that world: “there was in the life I fled a zest and a joy and a capacity for facing and surviving disaster that are very moving and very rare” (41). Although Baldwin leaves Harlem, he affirms his participation in and affection for the community it represents. The same is true of Coates, although he flees the anxiety provoked by Baltimore’s street violence, not to the church...