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review 2020-02-14 14:53
Powerful and thought provoking
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

What a wonderful yet very powerful read. David is betrothed to Hella, he is an American living in Paris waiting for his lover to join him. A chance meeting at a Paris bar with a young attractive Italian, Giovanni, results in David questioning values that he has always believed to be true. He takes a decision that will profoundly alter the course of his life, with devastating consequences.

 

Giovanni's room poses the question, do we as humans follow convention and lead a life and follow a set of codes that is expected of us, or should we throw caution to the wind and by so doing be true to our self. A story that it is impossible not to be affected by and issues as important today as when the novel was first published. Highly Recomended

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review 2019-07-16 17:45
Can You See Me America?
I Am Not Your Negro - James Baldwin

I heard about the movie, but had no idea there was a companion book to it.

 

"In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America."

 

The writing, essays, the photos that were used are powerful and makes one want to hang your head down and wonder when will we get to that mountaintop where all men and women are seen as equal no matter the color of their skin? We have a US President and conservative based Congress that think racism is okay. They think if they are not calling black people, those who worship differently than them a slur that it's okay. It's like watching everything slowly grind to a halt and you want everyone to just wake up. Call a thing the name that it is. It's racism. We have ignored it for too long and we don't seem to care to change.

 

Baldwin's writing is electrifying. It gets in your blood and in your head and I find myself nodding my head and feeling nothing but sorrow because in 2019 we have not come far enough. To think we are pushing ourselves back to a time in this country where we are once again seen as "other" and "wrong" I don't know what we do to combat it. 

 

"JAMES BALDWIN: Well, I don’t think there’s much hope for it, you know, to tell you the truth as long as people are using this peculiar language. It’s not a question of what happens to the Negro here or to the black man here—that’s a very vivid question for me, you know—but the real question is what is going to happen to this country. I have to repeat that."

 

 "Forget the Negro problem. Don’t write any voting acts. We had that—it’s called the fifteenth amendment—during the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. What you have to look at is what is happening in this country, and what is really happening is that brother has murdered brother knowing it was his brother. White men have lynched Negroes knowing them to be their sons. White women have had Negroes burned knowing them to be their lovers. It is not a racial problem. It is a problem of whether or not you’re willing to look at your life and be responsible for it, and then begin to change it. That great Western house I come from is one house, and I am one of the children of that house. Simply, I am the most despised child of that house. And it is because the American people are unable to face the fact that I am flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone, created by them. My blood, my father’s blood, is in that soil."

 

"JAMES BALDWIN: There is nothing in the evidence offered by the book of the American republic which allows me really to argue with the cat who says to me: “They needed us to pick the cotton and now they don’t need us anymore. Now they don’t need us, they’re going to kill us all off. Just like they did the Indians.” And I can’t say it’s a Christian nation, that your brothers will never do that to you, because the record is too long and too bloody. That’s all we have done. All your buried corpses now begin to speak."

 

"JAMES BALDWIN: I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don’t know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means I can’t afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church."

 

This also includes some very hard pictures to view such as a black woman being lynched, people being jeered, and Martin Luther King in his coffin. I did not want to include them in this review because it was upsetting enough for me to view. This was definitely interesting to read and I am going to seek out the documentary soon. 

 

I end on this. 

 

I am a black woman, when you tell me you don't see my color or it's unimportant, you are telling me you don't see me, that I am not important. When the default color is white and Christian you ignore what makes up this country of ours. To speak out against what we see is wrong is the American thing to do. 

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review 2019-01-15 01:43
Perfect
If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk is sublime. For those who saw the movie, not everything in the novel stays the same, there are some scenes that I assume were cut for time. I thought that the way this ended was pretty perfect though.

 

This book is told from the POV of 18 year old Tish. She is dealing with the effects of her fiancee Fonny being locked up after he was accused of rape. You think that this would be simple until you read the long winding road that led them to this point. 

 

Tish's voice in this story is strong. Through her we get to see her first look at Fonny when they were kids and when they became something more. You get her frustration with how things are right now. And you get how she loves him. More than that, you get to see how Tish's family loves her. Her mother, father, and sister end up being Fonny's family too. 

We also get a look at Fonny's family and his two sisters, mother, and father. There could have been a whole other book about them. Every one that appears in this book is fully developed though. I don't know how long it has been that I read something that I could say well that was great, this person is great, and I can see this person in my head. 

Baldwin doesn't tell this story in a linear fashion, but it works. We go from the past (when Tish and Fonny met) her remembering the first time they went to church, and then back in the present with her telling her family that she is pregnant. And then we jump back again to see how happy Tish and Fonny were before they had a night that changed everything. The writing isn't lyrical. It is raw and in your face. 

 

“Tish,” she said, “when we was first brought here, the white man he didn’t give us no preachers to say words over us before we had our babies. And you and Fonny be together right now, married or not, wasn’t for that same damn white man. So, let me tell you what you got to do. You got to think about that baby. You got to hold on to that baby, don’t care what else happens or don’t happen. You got to do that.

 

“Unbow your head, sister,” she said, and raised her glass and touched mine. “Save the children,” she said, very quietly, and drained her glass.

 

That baby was our baby, it was on its way, my father’s great hand on my belly held it and warmed it: in spite of all that hung above our heads, that child was promised safety.

 

“I don’t know,” Frank said, “how God expects a man to act when his son is in trouble. Your God crucified His son and was probably glad to get rid of him, but I ain’t like that. I ain’t hardly going out in the street and kiss the first white cop I see. But I’ll be a very loving motherfucker the day my son walks out of that hellhole, free. I’ll be a loving motherfucker when I hold my son’s head between my hands again, and look into his eyes. Oh! I’ll be full of love, that day!”

 

The flow of this book was perfect. At times I was smiling, in tears, or full of despair, or hope. Baldwin puts you through the ringer. You want Tish and Fonny to have a different end to their story, but we all know what the end is going to be, what is has to be when you are talking about two black kids in love in the 1970s in America. Heck, have things changed? Baldwin shows you colorism, racism, sexism, police brutality, and one wonders have we come far enough? 

 

The setting of If Beale Street Could Talk is New York in the 1970s. You get to see how hard it was/is for a black man and a black woman at that time. 

 

The ending is left with us waiting for a new life even though we know that the life that Tish wanted is now gone. 

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review 2019-01-01 00:00
Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone
Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone - James Baldwin Early in this novel, Baldwin devotes a few pages to a humorous comparison of the ways French, Swiss and Italian border guards behave: the French being rude and inefficient, the Swiss intensely serious, efficient and systematic, the Italians rather surprised that one had bothered to visit their country but delighted all the same and not remotely concerned about the rules. From this gentle piece of absurdism, he switches suddenly and brutally to the point: there was no border as sharp and dangerous as the demarcation between the Black and the White segments of an American town or city. So when Leo Proudhammer, a Black American born to a poor family in Harlem, takes it into his mind to become an actor, his brother is incredulous, until Leo makes the inspired observation that his prospects of success in any line of work available to him are precisely zero, and that is how American society is designed; however remote his prospects of success in acting, they are nevertheless better than nil by at least some marginal fraction. Of course we know from the opening pages of this story that Leo will in fact become famous and affluent as an actor, and towards the end he is exposed to the cynical assertion that his success proves that Black Americans are not excluded from the American Dream, they just need to stop being sorry for themselves and work hard. The novel replies to that false claim by illustrating just how vicious and oppressive White America’s racism really is and what intolerably unfair odds have been overcome by those rare cases of exceptional achievement
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review 2018-10-28 00:00
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out

I know why this book sat on my shelf for so long. I read Giovanni’s Room several years ago, and while I loved James Baldwin’s writing, I really did not care for the story, particularly the way it ended. I’ve picked up Go Tell It on the Mountain several times when looking for my next read, and each time, I put it away, never quite in the right mood for this book that felt too heavy with expectation and history, like a book I should read more than a book I wanted to read, much like another recent read from my backlog, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.

Being the oldest son, John has long been expected by everyone to become a preacher like his father Gabriel, yet he’s still waiting for a sign that it’s his true calling. He goes to a storefront church Harlem with his family, and he pays attention and tries to be good, unlike his rebellious younger brother, who comes home one Friday night, slashed across the face in a knife fight. The pious, stern Gabriel blames his wife for Roy’s troubles, but she defends herself while Gabriel’s sister reminds him of his own shortcomings. The tension bursts when Gabriel slaps Elizabeth, and shortly after, John heads to church to clean up before the night’s informal prayer service. Over the course of the evening, the three adults think back on their personal and shared histories, while John prays for faith and direction. 

Baldwin’s other-worldly way with words is already on display in this first novel, and I was fully engaged for the first two sections before it all went pear-shaped, the characters swept up suddenly in religious experience that contradicts everything up to that point and descends into a madness of inscrutable narration. Once again, I’d allowed myself to be drawn in by Baldwin’s powerful language only to be let down by ending that I just didn’t buy. 

I’ve had a similar issue with a few other writers. Paul Monette’s fiction writing was stiff and mannered, but his brilliant autobiography practically saved my life when I was coming out after college. I’ve tried and failed multiple times to get through Infinite Jest, but I love David Foster Wallace’s essays, particularly his writings on tennis. And with Baldwin, I get the feeling he doesn’t like any of his fictional characters enough to care about what happens to them, good or bad, so they end up feeling more like props. His nonfiction doesn’t suffer from the same issue and benefits even more from his thunderous writing style. Not all great writers are great fictional storytellers, and that’s ok. I’ll stick with Baldwin’s nonfiction, but I’ll need a bit of a break to recover from this one.

(This review was originally posted as part of Cannonball Read 10: Sticking It to Cancer, One Book at a Time.)
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