If Beale Street Could Talk
$24.75
- Paperback
192 pages
- Release Date
29 September 1994
Summary
We are in Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin’s novel is Tish, nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover, Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780140187977 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0140187979 |
| Author: | James Baldwin |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Penguin Classics |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 192 |
| Release Date: | 29 September 1994 |
| Weight: | 146g |
| Dimensions: | 13mm x 128mm x 197mm |
| Series: | Penguin Modern Classics |
| Audience Age: | 14-18 |
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Critics Review
If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family
If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family – Joyce Carol Oates
Soulful … Racial injustice may flatten “the black experience” into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life-but black life, black love, is so much larger than that … It’s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin’s work that blackness contains multitudes * Vanity Fair *
Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing – Cornel West
The spirit of Jimmy’s work is of a high moral prophetic vision – Amriri Baraka
One of the few essential novelists of our time * New Statesman *
James Baldwin
James Baldwin
Born in 1924 in New York, James Baldwin achieved immediate success with his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which drew upon his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem. His subsequent novels, Giovanni’s Room (1956), a landmark of gay literature, and Another Country (1962), garnered significant literary attention.
Baldwin’s powerful essay collections, Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), cemented his status as an influential voice in the Civil Rights Movement. He continued to publish influential non-fiction works, including The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). His short stories are gathered in Going to Meet the Man (1965).
Later in his career, Baldwin published novels such as Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979).
Throughout his career, Baldwin received numerous literary fellowships, including an Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. In 1986, he was honored as a Commander of the Legion of Honour. James Baldwin passed away in 1987 in France.
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