If Beale Street Could Talk: James Baldwin (Penguin Modern Classics)

New
Paperback
1994
$10.80

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.

Synopsis

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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Edition: 1
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 29 Sep 1994
ISBN 10: 0140187979
ISBN 13: 9780140187977

Media Reviews

One of the best books Baldwin has ever written- perhaps the best of all. - The Philadelphia Inquirer A moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless. - Joyce Carol Oates If Van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our twentiethth-century one. - Michael Ondaatje Striking and particularly haunting. . . . A beauty, especially in its rendering of youthful passion. - Cosmopolitan A major work of black American fiction... His best novel yet, even Baldwin's most devoted readers are due to be stunned by it. - The New Republic Emotional dynamite... a powerful assault upon the cynicism that seems today to drain our determination to confront deep social problems. - Library Journal A moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless. - The New York Times Book Review

Author Bio

Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, play-wright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay col-lection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987.