This is Karen Hunter and welcome to the hub. So you know I'm reading the Fire Next Time, the great piece of work by James Baldwin, and I'm reading it slowly and I'm processing as I go along.

I was an English major in college at Drew University, but I didn't really engage in a way that I wish I had, but also I don't think that there were enough professors that could engage me in a way to awaken things in me because

it was a university predominantly white, with predominantly white teachers.

Not that a white teacher can't tap into the soul of a black student or any student for that matter,

but I think when we talk about the Tony Morrison's or the Zora Neil Hurstons or the Alice

Walker's or the Maya Angelos or the Alice Walker's or the Maya

Angeles or the James Baldwin's, the Richard rights.

You should have some cultural understanding

and not something that you

to be able to take it forward. And so pretty much in the realm, in this realm,

I'm autodidactic and I've had a lot of time spent

with works outside of the classroom that I then had to bang up against

other people's minds to try to figure out where I land on these things and this is for discussion so I suggest that everyone

pick up this book the fire next time but pick it up with somebody or some bodies maybe have

a book club where you guys talk about it.

And let it be minds in a room that are different from yours,

but equally is powerful.

Because I think a lot of times we don't surround ourselves

with the people that will help us get to the next place.

And let me just be clear about that.

We need people to get to the next place.

But a lot of us punch down and a lot of us surround ourselves

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