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James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 29 September 1994

by James Baldwin (Author)

1,658 ratings

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The inspiration for the new film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins

'Achingly beautiful' Guardian

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.

'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

ISBN-10

0140187979
ISBN-13

978-0140187977
Publisher

Penguin UK
Publication date

29 September 1994
Language

English
Dimensions

19.8 x 1.4 x 12.9 cm
Print length

192 pages
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Product description

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 -- 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

About the Author

Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, 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 collection 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.

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Product details

Publisher : Penguin UK (29 September 1994)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 0140187979
ISBN-13 : 978-0140187977
Item Weight : 179 g
Dimensions : 19.8 x 1.4 x 12.9 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #107,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,297 in Classic Fiction (Books)
- #9,965 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)
- #12,218 in Reference (Books)

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1,658 ratings

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4 star		13%
3 star		5%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Bryn Griffith

Engrossing. Does "angry" better than anyone else.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 March 2019

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I'll keep this short, but I think this is a truly brilliant book whose greatest strength, for me, lies in the depiction of relationships between the two young lovers and their respective families.
The girl's family is loving and supportive whilst the boy's family is more conflicted.
There are some wonderful conversations in this book, but the passage I enjoyed the most is concerned with the antagonism between the two families when they meet to discuss how they should deal with the girl's pregnancy The encounter is both physically and verbally pretty brutal and I loved it.
If you are someone who is not keen on the use of swear words then you might want to give this a wide birth as they are used quite liberally and with great effect; the book is populated by realistic characters with real and very difficult lives.
An ever present throughout the book is a hatred of the racism these characters have to negotiate their lives through.
The author himself was a black homosexual civil rights activist and I, as a middle-class white male, couldn't fail to get a real sense of the indignities, wrongs and frustrations heaped on the American black population. I also felt that the voices of the characters were noticeably different from those written by white authors e.g. you wont hear white men referring to each other as "baby".
The language employed is not difficult and the book, whilst by no means simple, is a joy to read and I can't for the life of me understand people giving a book of this quality a poor review.

8 people found this helpful

HLeuschel

Stunning!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2019

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Had I had the time over the last few days, I would have wanted to gobble up this amazing piece of writing on one sitting. It's that good! The narrative concentrates tightly on two people, a young woman and man who have dreams and the simple aspiration of living together and make some of those dreams happen. The main crux though is that they are African Americans in the 1970s, that they've grown up in poor circumstances and that racial hatred is rife. There is no justice protecting the falsely accused Fonny and no peace for Tish who is carrying a child by the time he's incarcerated for a rape allegation.

It's a short powerful read that packs a punch, brings alive two individuals who don't give up on each other because sometimes love is all you've got in life.

3 people found this helpful

Antenna

When love is growing up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 November 2020

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Written half a century ago and read against the backdrop of “Black Lives Matter” this modern classic is a reminder of the persistence of racial injustice, given added authenticity by the black American author’s personal experience. Nineteen-year-old Tish has a steady job and close-knit family, who accept with almost unbelievable equanimity her unplanned pregnancy, just when her fiancé and childhood sweetheart Fonny, who has ambitions to be a sculptor, has been arrested for a serious crime on a charge trumped up by a vicious racist white police officer. Made all the more poignant by the depth of the couple’s love, this novel is an unflinching portrayal of how the cards may be stacked to destroy the lives of an innocent couple simply because of their colour.

The approach is unusual in that the male author sets himself the challenge of getting inside the mind of a young woman, even to the extent of describing her orgasm. James Baldwin is also experimental in the flexible structure of the book. Tish narrates the novel in the first person, presumably to involve the reader in a more vivid experience of the drama, but when it suits him he replaces her voice with his own observations in his own style, as when he launches into an analysis of the mental differences between women and men. To portray events in which, say, Fonny’s friend Daniel is previously framed by the police and put in prison, or Tish’s mother Sharon visits Puerto Rico to make contact with the woman who has been manipulated into picking Fonny out of an identity parade, the author simply takes “writer’s licence” and has Tish describe scenes as if she has witnessed them in person.

With strong opening scenes, dialogues and sense of place, as the facts are revealed, I found myself engrossed in how they would play out. Although it seems inevitable that Fonny would be found guilty, would some twist expose a fatal flaw in the prosecution? The sympathetic white lawyer might be prepared to work virtually “pro bono”, but how would Tish’s family and Fonny’s loving but weak father Frank manage to scrape together the money for his bail, without themselves taking to illegal activities which might cause them to fall foul of the law?

The “bad” characters are too often caricatures with no redeeming features, like Fonny’s religiously fanatical mother who seems inexplicably hostile towards him – most mothers love their sons. His thinly sketched sisters are also pointlessly disagreeable. Although I am often intrigued by ambiguous or inconclusive situations leaving one free to form one’s own conclusion, in this case I was surprised and disappointed by an ending so abrupt as to seem incomplete. Yet perhaps for Baldwin, the development of specific scenes was more important than the arc of a plot.

One person found this helpful

Ruju

Powerful but rambling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 December 2020

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I see from the number of reviews and the average rating that the majority of readers have had a different opinion of If Beale Street Could talk than myself. For me, it's another classic that failed to live up to the hype. The story, of a young man wrongly accused of a crime by a racist establishment, has the potential for a powerful novel. Unfortunately, in the telling it lacks conviction. Told in first person by the girlfriend of the accused, even when she isn't present, the book does contain some powerful scenes. However, despite being a short novel, both narrative and dialogue have a tendency to ramble into content with little or no relevance to the plot. It's not badly written (obviously!) but these digressions made it tedious in places. My rating would be 2.5, but it's better than a 2, so I've given it 3.

One person found this helpful

Stephanie Mclagan

Interesting, entertaining and eye-opening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 February 2019

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This was a beautifully written book. It was so unlike anything I have read before. Wonderful to see the world from somebody else’s perspective and gain insight into what life is life for people who are marginalised and fighting prejudice.

6 people found this helpful

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