In characteristically thought-provoking precision, Baldwin links misogyny and anti-queerness. David’s hatred of feminine qualities in men and Giovanni’s hatred of women mirror each other, and expose how David’s self-loathing impacts his relationship to women and Giovanni’s misogynist views mask his own self-hatred. The more sharply their paths diverge, the more they intersect. And as we are led to a heart-shattering conclusion where David must choose between Giovanni and his girlfriend, Hella, and Giovanni faces life-threatening consequences, we are left to wonder which of their fates is worse — or if they are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

I want something that will rattle my soul

“The Fire Next Time” (1963) is probably Baldwin’s most popular book. It begins with a letter written to his nephew James, in which Baldwin implores his namesake not to believe any of the negative things white supremacists have to say about him; that what they say about him actually reveals what they really feel about themselves. “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your humanity but to their inhumanity and fear,” he wrote.

In the book’s more substantive essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter From a Region in My Mind,” he turns his critical eye on Christianity and sits down in conversation with Elijah Muhammad, then the leader of the Nation of Islam. He reflects on these encounters and concludes that ultimately, religion serves as a divisive force — that it invests human beings with false senses of superiority, that white people’s hostilities and Black people’s resentments of those hostilities will perhaps lead to race wars and possibly the destruction of the nation. “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, more loving,” he writes. “If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.”

For Baldwin, the only thing that might help us avoid these dire fates is love. Not the romantic or commercial kind, but the radical kind in which folks are called upon to really love their neighbors, by which Baldwin meant through actions, not feelings. And his assessment comes, in the final pages, as a warning, as a clarion call that, still to this day, reverberates off the walls and rattles the soul.