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If Beale Street Could Talk

4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 · rating details · 1,988 ratings · 165 reviews

In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible c...more

Paperback, 208 pages

Published October 10th 2006 by Vintage (first published January 1st 1974)

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Mar 05, 2008 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-books-ever

Anything by James Baldwin is good, but this was the first of his books I read and it soaked my mind in a sweet broth.

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Feb 09, 2008 jessi lee rated it 5 of 5 stars

i just pulled out a selection from this book to read for valentine's day with my adult english class at St. Leonards' high school. it's a pretty easy read. the plot is about a pregnant 19-year old black woman in NYC fighting (with her family) to get her fiance out of jail as he faces a pretty serious charge.

i had forgotten what i loved so much about it, and i'm struck again, reading it, how important it is to love people simply & stubbornly, and how state violence & racism attack that l...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Zoe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Zoe by: Holly Telerant

Shelves: book-group

Beautiful and so sad. Heartbreaking, actually. After 35 years, not all that much has changed for African American men in this country. Scenes of young love in the West Village of the mid-20th century brought back poignant glimpses of my (white) parents' youth to me. I like the way sexuality was portrayed in this novel.

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Feb 20, 2013 Shanice rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love James Baldwin. I don't think I need to explain what a talented writer he is; however, there were parts of this book that I felt were a bit melodramatic. That could just be me. There's an argument that takes place between a few people that seemed to get a little crazy in my opinion. Other than that I enjoyed this book and so much of it is recognizable in a present-day context. There are still police officers like the ones in this book, the prison industrial complex still affects black men...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am just crazy about James Baldwin's later work. The dialogue in this one feels like a Terkel tape recording. Really great. I've noticed a recurrent theme where a passive person must take care of an artistic genius. Exist to keep their flame from going out. Worked to better effect in Just Above My Head, which I absolutely loved. Here the reader can't help but wonder why Tish starts off so unbelievably strong on the very first page and then only bears witness to Fonny's genius. There. I said it....more

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Feb 14, 2009 Crystal Belle rated it 5 of 5 stars

this novel is baldwin's best. i thought another country was it, but this was by far the best! a love story between two african-american teenagers in harlem. their love is tested by the racism of the police and of society in general. the lanaguage is beautiful, cruel, haunting, and passionate all at once. as a human being, you are forced to think, to question and to step outside of what is comfortable. there is also the lingering question throughout: what does it truly mean to be an artist? i fin...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this novel Baldwin is caught between the naturalistic bent of most of his fiction and a desire to unequivocally champion certain characters and the qualities they possess, i.e., to write about heroes. He clearly thinks the protagonists, Tish and Fonny, and Tish's family are wonderful human beings -- but he can't quite bring himself to present them as making real progress against their troubles in a well-developed plot structure. The reason? He still has a stake in revealing the immense weight...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Dora Okeyo rated it 4 of 5 stars

"These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned. To do much is to have true power and the necessity to dictate to the damned. But that, thinks Fonny, works both ways."

Story: Fonny loves Tish (19years old and pregnant with his child)-but he's been falsely accused of rape-and is imprisoned-and the only thing they can ask is "will he be set free?"

I loved: Tish- for a nineteen year old, she is strong and sees the world for what it is. Injusti...more

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Apr 12, 2012 VaLinda Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Tish and Fonny, young, African Americans are trying so very hard to get a decent job, marry and get a home. They are young and in love in the 1970s New York, which was extremely hard for a black man accused of rape. I will always believe to this day that he did not do it, but this book takes you thru the hell both families go thru to get him out of jail. You've heard it before, her family is supportive and his family is sort of supportive, but his black father had his own hard time. This book, w...more

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Nov 06, 2009 Salwa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Drew recommended I read this as an antidote to John Updike's second book in the Rabbit series, Rabbit Redux. If you've read that book, you know how f*ed up it is, and how racially charged it is as well. While Rabbit is not an all out racist, the book is definitely written from a white perspective and provides extremely stereotypical caricatures of black people (at least to my mind). So, Drew rightfully though I should read Baldwin who was writing at the same time as Updike but from a radically d...more

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Sep 24, 2009 Kinga rated it 5 of 5 stars

Well. Let’s face it: we have read enough love stories already. What new revelation can be said about this topic?

Oh, but it can be. Seriously. And to prove my point let me tell you about two short novels by James Baldwin I have read lately: If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Giovanni’s Room (1956).

The title of Beale Street is a bit misleading: the novel is definitely not about one particular street but rather about the world of Harlem, or probably even more.

After taking stock of the main ingre...more Well. Let’s face it: we have read enough love stories already. What new revelation can be said about this topic?

Oh, but it can be. Seriously. And to prove my point let me tell you about two short novels by James Baldwin I have read lately: If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Giovanni’s Room (1956).

The title of Beale Street is a bit misleading: the novel is definitely not about one particular street but rather about the world of Harlem, or probably even more.

After taking stock of the main ingredients we might just shake our heads: no, no, no! What clichés! What stereotypical characters! What boring schemes! The inhuman, wicked (and what’s more: albino!) policeman; the quasi altruist priests (who do not shy away from a little bit of stealing either – but that’s OK as the greatest classics in literature have already “legalized” stealing for the poor’s sake); a loving couple whose love is of course based on devotion and trust, unconditional belief in each other; the conformity of an overly ambitious family that is ready to sacrifice its most appealing member, the innocently accused son; and so on and so forth.

But not so fast. Baldwin was one of the greatest writers of our times (died in 1987), and we realize once again the truth in what I mentioned not a long ago about Cervantes: the subject matter is really secondary; the most important factor of a great work is the talent that creates something outstanding in the end from an otherwise trite stuff.

This Romeo & Juliet story is presented with a very passionate, moving writing style and with totally credible psychological and sociological insights. The seemingly stereotypical characters and situations are nicely balanced by other features and figures, like the protagonist’s lonely sister with her rich and pretty assertive personality, Baldwin’s sympathy for the mother who escapes into bigotry and social pretense (an otherwise typical negative character), or the lawyer who is pretty indifferent and solicitous at first but then gets very keen about “doing the right thing” (and endangering his career at the same time), etc. The construction of the novel also adds to its greatness: Baldwin cleverly feeds the story’s antecedents and context bit by bit and it surely makes us want to read on and on.

And the result? This initially (and seemingly) not too exciting and ambitious novel gradually becomes a truly magnificent work of art in the hand of an outstanding writer.

(I am planning to write about Giovanni’s Room next week.)
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Jun 19, 2009 Beti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amidst the most cruel of circumstances is this, a most tender love story, that brings to mind the phrase, "the rose that grew from concrete". I was not expecting that. Set in the 70's in New York City, two young black people, powerless to a horrible system, painfully aware of their poverty and circumstances, cultivate the most touching relationship. Instead of relying on flowery prose, the simplistic writing sets a scene, with the language- jive, baby, ya dig, the location-Black Harlem, hipster...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Jon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oh boy, what do you say when a good writer goes BAD? I know James Baldwin has the talent, but this book I couldn't even FINISH it seemed so stereotypically 70's and what passed for enlightened Afrocentric consciousness at the time though to me now it just read as trite.

This book reads like a Soap Opera or after school special or some hokey TV sitcom like "Mama's Place". I just started to get bored by (self-described) "uppity" African American women getting in everyone's face and TELLING IT LIKE...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

In one of the more memorable lines of "To Kill a Mockingbird", Atticus Finch tells his daughter Scout to never judge a man until she's walked a mile in his shoes. The lesson, of course, is that it is not possible to walk a mile in another man's shoes (and therefore impossible to ever really know him), and therefore we should never judge.

So if it is impossible to walk in another man's shoes, as an author James Baldwin gets us as close to this as is possible. His writing of disenfranchised African...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In this novel Mr. Baldwin employs a female narrator, it allows for the author to explore different scenes through another perspective. I have always been rather skeptical of men writing as women, but the writing is interesting enough to overcome my prejudices. The author continue to explore sexual connections and concepts, but from the other gender. The opposition of perspective is especially interesting when compared to Mr. Baldwin's other material.

The plot in the this novel is thin and does n...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Dominic rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic-literature

The Rivers family could quite possibly be one of the most realistically functional families in literature. Too often are we given familial relationships that are weak, damaged, mangled, or totally messed up. While young Tish, her sister, mother, and father are challenged by poverty, by racism, by circumstance and by close-mindedness, the strength of their bond as a unit is unwavering. Sadness can be overcome by the support of family. Love can reign supreme.

If Beale Street Could Talk also contain...more

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Jan 02, 2011 Eileen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, read-2011, classics

Going down memory lane with an oldie.....
I read this book for the first time in Highschool for my oral exams English.

For me it's a story about unconditional love and racism. Almost all the characters in the book are simple, believable and very strong.

Tish is 19 and pregnant. Fonny is 22 and in jail for a crime he did not commit. They are very frightened, but intensely brave and above all very much in love.

While reading about this great love story I came to love Tish and Fonny too, but what impr...more

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May 04, 2010 Randy Bowman rated it 4 of 5 stars

In If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a story of unconditional love. Its takes place in Harlem in the 1970s, with a character named Clementine; she goes by Tish for short. In the novel she is described as a dark-skinned, long legged, mildly attractive and shy girl. She is nineteen, and is the baby of her close nit family, consisting of her mom, her sister, and her dad. Tish’s dad is a hard-working man fending for his family, but still keeps a comfortable close relationship with his f...more In If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a story of unconditional love. Its takes place in Harlem in the 1970s, with a character named Clementine; she goes by Tish for short. In the novel she is described as a dark-skinned, long legged, mildly attractive and shy girl. She is nineteen, and is the baby of her close nit family, consisting of her mom, her sister, and her dad. Tish’s dad is a hard-working man fending for his family, but still keeps a comfortable close relationship with his family. Tish’s mom has the role of a mother but also as Tish’s best friend, she tells her mom everything, there’s even a point in the story when Tish is contemplating how to tell her mom some important news, and her mom already knew before she even told her. Tish’s sister is her elder and the book seems to emphasize how more attractive she is compared to Tish.
There is also another main character in the book. Adding to the theme of unconditional love is the character, Alonzo, but he goes by the nickname of Fonny. Fonny and Tish are in love and they’ve been in love for most of their lifetime. They first met when they were kids at when Fonny got into an altercation. Fonny got into a fight with a girl, after the situation had calmed down Tish had decided to become his friend. They spent most their days together, and just be friends, it took a while for them to become romantically involved.
Fonny is described as a caring lighter-than-dark skinned boy. As Fonny and Tish proceed to grow up they meet up with a few obstacles in the road but they use their love to protect themselves from the bad times, the most important event that turns Tish and Fonny’s lives upside down is when Fonny is accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman. Tish doesn’t know what to do, but she’s determined to find a way to get Fonny out of jail. Tish and her family will stop at nothing to get him out safely, even if that means working extra hours to work up the money for Fonny’s bail. In the midst of all of this something else happens to Tish that makes their time window a little smaller, she finds out that she is with-child. Even after finding that out, she still works herself to the bone to help Fonny.
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Aug 19, 2012 Quan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Beautiful. The way Baldwin can connect suffering and pain to love and triumph is transcendent.

The gist of the story: a young black man goes to jail for raping a woman he didn't rape. His fiance and her family struggle to free him. But Baldwin is less concerned about plot as he is about emotions between people and that's where the book focuses. What I'm about to say, I'm stealing from the synopsis on the back cover of the book. But yeah, this book, like much of Baldwin's work that I've read, is v...more

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May 12, 2010 Andrew Thomas Clifton rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is the best writing I have ever had the pleasure of reading, this simple book with simple people living a simple life is much more than just a love story. Its a prodigal work that both sees forward and looks backward into what love means for two people

It taught me that love can be true, even when the world stands against it. that love is individually and collectively its own being to be grown and cultivated and loved. It made me cherish the experiences of growing up Negro in America, and want...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Joyce rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, history-historical-fiction, classics

In some ways, this book was reminiscent of If I Stay, not because the plot was similar, but rather because of the writing style. Both stories were narrated in first person points of view, both stories jumped back and forth between time, both stories had ratings above four stars, but both stories failed to draw me in, to make me commiserate with the protagonists.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if my expectations weren’t set so high. From the 4.09 average rating, to the last sentence i...more In some ways, this book was reminiscent of If I Stay, not because the plot was similar, but rather because of the writing style. Both stories were narrated in first person points of view, both stories jumped back and forth between time, both stories had ratings above four stars, but both stories failed to draw me in, to make me commiserate with the protagonists.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if my expectations weren’t set so high. From the 4.09 average rating, to the last sentence in the description, to the reviews, I had expected something similar to To Kill a Mockingbird, something that explored how racism was viewed by different people, how those who helped the oppressed minority was discriminated, shunned by society. In all fairness, this book did cover those things, but only for about one, two paragraphs, and the rest were filled with remembrances of her time with Fonny.

My favourite part of this story is the part about him in jail. Not because I’m a crazy pervert who enjoys reading about this kind of thing, but rather because I think it’s the one thing that makes Fonny human. Up till then, he had been portrayed in such an adoring light that he seemed to be a figment of someone’s imagination, someone’s ideal partner instead of a real person.

What I disliked most about this story was the lack of an ending. You had your climax coming up – would Fonny be able to go a free me? – but then it just ended. Goodbye. The end. End of story. I was left, after flipping the page over expecting to see more text, floundering on my chair, wondering what had happened. I hate it when a writer does that, though I comprehend, on a theoretical level, that it’s supposed to make you ponder the ending, to stretch your grey matter, but on a practical level? The lack of an ending only makes me think that the writer couldn’t be bothered to think up a suitable, original ending.

But maybe the problem’s me. Maybe, if I read this book again 5 years later, I will shed tears over how sad the story is. Maybe, if I read this book again 5 years later, I will find that it resonates with something within me. Maybe. I don’t know. (less)

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Jul 25, 2012 Ryan Milbrath rated it 5 of 5 stars

James Baldwin’s fifth novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, is a love story set in Harlem during the early 1970’s. If Beale Street Could Talk is not a typical love story. I’m not sure that Baldwin can write a typical story. Through flashbacks the reader glimpses the evolving intimate relationship between two young lovers, Fonny and Tish, as they struggle with issues that are bigger than themselves.
The character of Fonny seems to represent the struggling artist that Baldwin always saw himself as;...more James Baldwin’s fifth novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, is a love story set in Harlem during the early 1970’s. If Beale Street Could Talk is not a typical love story. I’m not sure that Baldwin can write a typical story. Through flashbacks the reader glimpses the evolving intimate relationship between two young lovers, Fonny and Tish, as they struggle with issues that are bigger than themselves.
The character of Fonny seems to represent the struggling artist that Baldwin always saw himself as; however, the story’s true concern is that of Tish’s growth through tragedy and love. After being falsely accused of rape, Fonny, Tish’s emotional anchor, has been secluded to a jail cell for the majority of the novel. Conflict and coping are the mechanisms by which Baldwin fuels the reality of Beale Street. Tish is pregnant with Fonny’s child. Fonny’s isolation, dysfunctional families, religious zealotry, racism and the the struggle for resources form the basis for conflict and Tish’s response to the stress.
One of Baldwin’s strengths as a male writer is his ability to portray strong females as protagonists. Tish’s story is filled with moments to wallow in despair and desperation. She is an African American female in the 1970s with little education and pregnant by a man in jail. With all the cards stacked against her, she launches a campaign, fueled by love and devotion, to free Fonny from prison. Never once, does Tish doubt Fonny’s innocence. It is this faith through love that Baldwin has never given up on throughout his novels. Though, he condemns organized religion, Baldwin, like Tish, has never seemed to give up on power of faith in those that we love.
Ever true to reality, Baldwin does not give the reader a complete ending. Rather, his endings are like new beginnings; through tragedy comes promise. Despite Tish and her mother’s best efforts, Fonny will continue to remain in jail until his bail can be posted. His baby is born and his father commits suicide while he stays isolated from the world. Baldwin emphasized the heroic nature of his characters. Their willingness to sacrifice forms the backbone of this story. However, Baldwin never gets emotionally attached to them to create a story that is implausibly happy. Instead, at the risk of being called a cynic, he shows how strong the darker side of society truly is. No one side, wins, and for eternity, the forces of love will tug just as equally at hearts of men and women as despair will.
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Jul 14, 2011 Kris McCracken rated it 4 of 5 stars

If Beale Street Could Talk is James Baldwin's fifth novel. I only know Baldwin through his reputation, and after finishing this one I am kicking myself that I’ve left it so long to read one of his books.

A love story set in Harlem in the early-1970s; the novel evocatively recreates a certain time, space and community. Exploring the complex interweaving of family, culture, race and justice, it strikes a lovely balance between sweet and sad; anger and forgiveness.

Despite the overwhelming injustice...more

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Oct 08, 2011 V.C. V.C. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: african-american-literature

I’m a huge fan of James Baldwin; by far the novels I have read of his (Giovanni’s Room, Go Tell it On the Mountain, and Just Above My Head), gave a glorious reading experience that had left a profound effect on me. If Beale Street Could Talk, to my surprise, didn’t have that emotional pull, that instant connection and relationship with the characters, and the superior writing that I would expect from a Baldwin novel. Without a doubt Baldwin’s writing is still great here, but it is not his best....more

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May 08, 2011 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

I’m beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn’t make sense, how could it happen?

Waxing philosophical is always one of our last resorts—somewhere between violence and God. Tish Rivers—nineteen, pregnant, black, poor, engaged to a man in jail, and the narrator of James Baldwin’s 1973 novel, If Beale Street Could Talk—knows, somewhere in her heart, that she’s nearing the end of her rope. Of course a life wherein everything makes sense is easier to accept, easier to imagine. Instead Baldwin paints a more nihilistic, meaningless, and ultimately realistic portrait of American life.

Knowing Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk at first comes across as a novel about American racial injustice. The novel is peppered with references to white America taking pride in its continued oppression of minorities.

Now, the cops who put him in this wagon know that this dude is sick. I know they know it. He ain’t supposed to be in here—and him not hardly much more than a kid. But the mothers who put him in this wagon, man, they was coming in their pants while they did it. I don’t believe there’s a white man in this country, baby, who can even get his dick hard, without he hear some nigger moan.

Fonny—Tish’s fiancé—is indeed in jail, yet we are told it is for a crime he did not commit. Instead he is the victim of Officer Bell—a racist cop bound from the beginning to see Fonny in jail. The mythical white man is pervasive in the novel, from ineffectual lawyers to a corrupt legal system to the great machine of the city itself that fails to provide for the modern black American. In Baldwin’s novel, white men are not men at all. In a meeting with Officer Bell, Tish explains, “This may have been the very first time I ever looked into a white man’s eyes… It was not like looking into a man’s eyes.” Indeed racial injustice runs thick throughout the novel, yet if race were its subject it would make the novel transparent. The novel would have a message. A book wherein every black character is a victim and every white character is a perpetrator is a book with a social agenda. Fortunately, this is not a novel about race.

Nor is it a novel about love—at least not youthful passion. Tish and Fonny’s relationship, as described by Tish, is wholly realistic in the sense that it’s achingly dull. Tish ruminates in teenage platitudes while Fonny assures her from behind bars: “I love you. I miss you. I miss everything about you, I miss everything we had together, everything we did together, walking and walking and making love, oh, baby, get me out of here.” The passion of their first time together is anything but passionate: “[A] scream rose up in me but he covered my lips with his lips, he strangled my scream with his tongue. His breath was in my nostrils, I was breathing with his breath and moving with his body.” For a novel with such raw beauty each and every reference to love or sex or passion falls flat. We are told that Fonny and Tish love each other and they often reassure themselves of that fact but as readers we never see it. Their love is colorless and tedious. Instead of feeling like we ourselves are witness to love we instead feel like we’re watching two naïve teenagers grope each other in the dark. Baldwin is too realistic for love, as is his novel.

Instead what Baldwin gives us is a novel about hope. The world he presents is the real world. Terrible things happen. Questions go unanswered. Hearts beat onward muted and afraid. But there is hope. Even when Fonny’s court date keeps getting pushed back and he begins to accept his cell and his solitude in the county jail; even when their fathers begin stealing to pay the lawyer fees and set aside money for Tish so she can stop working; even when all the witnesses on their side are bullied into submission, there is hope:

I cannot imagine what the thing inside of me is doing, but it appears to have acquired feet. Sometimes it is still, for days on end, sleeping perhaps, but more probably plotting—plotting its escape. Then, it turns, beating the water, churning, obviously becoming unspeakably bored in this element, and wanting out. We are beginning to have a somewhat acrid dialogue, this thing and I—it kicks, and I smash an egg on the floor, it kicks, and suddenly the coffeepot is upside down on the table, it kicks, and the perfume on the back of my hand brings salt to the roof of my mouth, and my free hand weighs on the heavy glass counter, with enough force to crack it in two. Goddamn it. Be patient. I’m doing the best I can—and it kicks again, delighted to have elicited so furious a response.

It’s no coincidence that the book’s most beautiful passages are of the raw and seething boiling life replicating inside of her. The world may be cold and heartless and throwing its weight on all those who inhabit it, but Baldwin gives us hope in that new baby. Tish’s baby is unadulterated potential. The baby is the reason everyone suffers, everyone believes. When God has failed the baby is their faith. The baby is the future. It is through the baby that Tish understands the world. It is then that we understand that the cruelties of race and the mechanics of love are mere cracks and fissures in the face of time. Time immeasurable. Time inexorable. Time that forgives. Baldwin has shown us that even in America, where our dreams are destroyed and our lives are undone, there is hope, and that is what Beale Street would say.

…and now something almost as hard to catch as a whisper in a crowded place, as light and as definite as a spider’s web, strikes below my ribs, stunning and astonishing my heart… But that light tap, that kick, that signal, announces to me that what can get worse can get better. Yes. It will get worse. But the baby, turning for the first time in its incredible veil of water, announces its presence and claims me; tells me, in that instant, that what can get worse can get better; and that what can get better can get worse.

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Oct 15, 2009 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: drama

This book easily made it up to the top of my list. With "Push", it is now one of my very favorite books of all time. The story was good, really pulled me in, but the writing and the author's style was even better. The descriptions of New York painted pictures of the streets, the people, and the atmosphere. The characters were completely drawn out and easy to believe. I feel like i know each and every one of them now. The love Tish's family has is deep and beautiful and I loved reading into it. F...more

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Jul 20, 2010 Demisty Bellinger rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am assuming the reference to Beale Street is that this is a kind of blues for each member of the Rivers family--the protagonist's Tish's clan--or for Tish's fiance Fonny and his father Frank. The Rivers family try to come up with funding, evidence, and emotional support for Fonny, Tish's fiance to get him out of jail and to prove his innocence. Fonny is accused of raping a woman and his situation is a result of only his race and his class.
The book is absolutely beautiful. It is reminiscent o...more

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Apr 24, 2008 Marlaina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, classics

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. this story is considered on of James Baldwin classics. it is his 13th book. Its suffering, bewildered people, trapped in what is referred to as the "garbage dump" of New York City--blacks constantly at the mercy of whites--have not even the psychological benefit of the Black Power and other radical movements to sustain them. Though their story should seem dated, it does not. And the peculiar fact of their being so politically helpless seems to have strengthened, in Baldwin's imagination at least...more this story is considered on of James Baldwin classics. it is his 13th book. Its suffering, bewildered people, trapped in what is referred to as the "garbage dump" of New York City--blacks constantly at the mercy of whites--have not even the psychological benefit of the Black Power and other radical movements to sustain them. Though their story should seem dated, it does not. And the peculiar fact of their being so politically helpless seems to have strengthened, in Baldwin's imagination at least, the deep, powerful bonds of emotion between them. "If Beale Street Could Talk" is a quite moving and very traditional celebration of love. It 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, which may involve extremes of sacrifice.

A sparse, slender narrative, told first-person by a 19-year-old named Tish, "If Beale Street Could Talk" manages to be many things at the same time. It is economically, almost poetically constructed, and may certainly be read as a kind of allegory, which refuses conventional outbursts of violence, preferring to stress the provisional, tentative nature of our lives. A 22- year-old black man, a sculptor, is arrested and booked for a crime--rape of a Puerto Rican woman--which he did not commit. The only black man in a police line-up, he is "identified" by the distraught, confused woman, whose testimony is partly shaped by a white policeman. Fonny, the sculptor, is innocent, yet it is up to the accused and his family to prove "and to pay for proving" this simple fact.

His fiancee, Tish, is pregnant; the fact of her pregnancy is, at times, all that keeps them from utter despair. The baby--the prospect of a new life--is connected with blacks' "determination to be free." At the novel's end, Fonny is out on bail, his trial postponed indefinitely, neither free nor imprisoned but at least returned to the world of the living. As a parable stressing the irresolute nature of our destinies, white as well as black, the novel is quietly powerful, never straining or exaggerating for effect. ~ this was taken out of the New York Times book Review(less)

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Feb 18, 2008 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic-fiction, fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My notes and quotes:

I walked out, to cross these big, wide corridors I’ve come to hate, corridors wider than all the Sahara desert. The Sahara is never empty; these corridors are never empty. If you cross the Sahara, and you fall, by and by vultures circle around you, smelling, sensing, your death. They circle lower and lower: they wait. They know. They know exactly when the flesh is ready, when the spirit cannot fight back. The poor are always crossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen a...more

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Nov 13, 2007 Januario added it

In this book, it was all about how unfair life is to a certain race of people. There was this person who was black and he has a wife. He gets sent to jail for doing a crime that he didn't do. He was accused of raping a woman but he didn't really do it. Of course, this happened because he was dark-skinned and the racism of life had forced him much closer to the chances of going to jail. What made it much worse is that his wife is pregnant. When the baby gets born, that would mean that its father...more

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About James Baldwin

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and '60s. The eldest of nine children, his stepfather was a minister. At age 14, Bal...more

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“Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.” — 50 people liked it

“Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.” — 21 people liked it

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title link	preview: If Beale Street Could Talk
avg rating	preview: If Beale Street Could Talk Goodreads rating: 4.10 (1988 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38463.If_Beale_Street_Could_Talk?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348428066l/38463.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38463.If_Beale_Street_Could_Talk?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin[/url]

If Beale Street Could Talk

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