Black History Month

Soul on Fire

Eldridge Cleaver

Essays, 1978

Like the earlier Soul on Ice (1968), Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Fire traces the development of the author's beliefs. Soul on Fire begins in the late 1960s, when Cleaver left the United States after becoming involved in a gunfight with the police. Cleaver was welcomed in socialist countries such as Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam, and fathered two children. The essays recount Cleaver's progressive disillusionment with life abroad. He soon came to think that socialism, as practiced in the countries where he lived, did not function properly. The main focus of the collection is his profound conversion to Christianity, which prompted him to return to the United States in 1975 and surrender to the authorities.