The Fire This Time

Ghansah writes of her decision to visit James Baldwin’s former home in the south of France. Although hesitant to pay for this trip, she has received income from writing and is now more relaxed about her previously stressful financial situation. For Ghansah, writing fights against her idea of “black death” (20), which involves financial hardship, trauma, and being forgotten. 

When she receives a large check, she decides to travel to Baldwin’s home, as he became her patron saint during a pivotal magazine internship. Her former internship was at a famous magazine with which she was not previously familiar. She anxiously traveled to the city on her first day, and editors oriented her and other interns at the magazine office. A fellow intern referenced the looting after Hurricane Katrina, reminding Ghansah of her black identity and the hurricane, which had occurred that week. She also discovered that she and the fellow intern seemed the only black people on staff at the magazine. 

One editor told Ghansah, to her surprise, that she was the magazine’s first black intern and that they had never staffed a black editor. Another editor confirmed this, leaving Ghansah feeling “like an oddity” (25). She experienced this racial difference with equal parts fortitude and fury.