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Just Above My Head

James Baldwin

4.37 · Rating details · 1,591 ratings · 185 reviews

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience.Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work.Here, too, the ...more

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Paperback, 584 pages

Published June 13th 2000 by Delta (first published 1978)

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· 1,591 ratings · 185 reviews

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Mar 22, 2018 Cheryl rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: lovers of sound in story

Shelves: fiction, african-american, fav-authors

The happiness of someone you love proves that life is possible. Your own horrors, whatever they may be, must simply await your return from the celebration - there can be no question of your taking them with you. And there they sit, indeed, in your room, when you return, looking baleful and neglected, and you realize that some horrors need you far more than you need them, and, mercilessly, you begin to clean house.

If Baldwin is criticized for writing fiction that reveals too much of the private The happiness of someone you love proves that life is possible. Your own horrors, whatever they may be, must simply await your return from the celebration - there can be no question of your taking them with you. And there they sit, indeed, in your room, when you return, looking baleful and neglected, and you realize that some horrors need you far more than you need them, and, mercilessly, you begin to clean house.

If Baldwin is criticized for writing fiction that reveals too much of the private self, then in inner conflict on page I revel. This is ponder and self-doubt and characters who find resolutions in the midst of a sweeping novel that spans two continents and three decades of war, love, and friendship.

(James Baldwin in 1964, Istanbul, Turkey. His home for seven years. Photo Credit: Sedat Pakay. Copyright 1989, 2013 DKDmedia)

This novel of brotherhood and angst is lyrical eloquence told from the reflections of an older brother, Hall, who has just received the news of his younger brother's death. They shared a personal and business bond that makes the reader feel as close to Arthur as Hall was. The words are pained, introspective, and achingly beautiful. As usual, Baldwin occasionally includes pages of dialogue that add immediacy and realism. Like Hemingway, his characters turn up elbows often: Scotch, Bourbon, Beer, you name it. They live in New York City and travel to London and Paris (like Baldwin), but this novel edges a bit to the South, where young singers, black men, realize just how much racism will change their lives forever.

They are artists, gospel singers. They are young males figuring out sexuality. They are minors coming of age. They are adults in love, adults in pain, adults who depend on substances, adults who suffer loss and heartache, and cruelty. Love is the bud of every flowered mini plot. Baldwin is bold and intense in these pages, as usual, never mincing words. It is as if this book is a culmination of his works, and technically it is, but artistically, it embodies all of his books and still leaves room for more exploration of Baldwin. This one is my favorite. I know that some find him a difficult read because of how he embeds homosexuality and race, but these are themes occurring through the lenses he uses as a writer; one immediately senses that these were themes instinctive and crucial to him as a writer, themes that drove him from his homeland and haunted his soul. Embracing these themes is an insanely equipped narrative structure with scenes strung together like the keyboard on a piano. And all I could say as I read was: Write on my brother, right on. ...more

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Feb 09, 2008 bruin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolute_favorites, queer, empire, fiction, violence, history

i read this book on the train and would often weep audibly while reading. all the commuters would stare and crane their necks to see what i was reading-- once an older lady who was sitting next to me patted my arm a bit while tears were rolling down my face.

building community on the train through such honest beauty in the form of literature--breathtaking.

this definitely goes on my favorite books ever shelf.

quite possibly one of the best books that i've ever read.

i will be going back over and ...more

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May 28, 2008 Wade rated it it was amazing

God damn. James Baldwin's novels are intense, and this is the best I've read. He writes so sharply, almost viciously, about the inner thoughts and experiences of his characters--in this case, a Black family in New York in the 1940s-60s. He is unsparing about the state of racial, sexual, and religious dynamics in the US, and it makes me wonder how much as really changed on the larger level. The book moved me to tears with its tender, tough, intimate, and devastating details of human lives. The ...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Meilani rated it it was amazing

My absolute favorite of Baldwin, or anyone, ever. I haven't been as moved by literature since the time I read this novel. So painfully incredible and joyous to be lost in these words.

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Sep 04, 2018 AfroLit rated it it was amazing

This book has a power of control and chaos. I understand humanness when reading Baldwin like no other. Yet, this is by far his best work for me. I sit and marvel at how present these characters are to me. That is a sign of brilliance, when nonfiction characters can't be played by any actor that we may no and love because these people are real. He discovered a way to insert society, culture, nationality, race, civility, hurt, pain, discovery and love into the very marrow of single person that ...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Michelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, favorites, hardback, fiction, lent-out

This is the best book I've ever read.

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Dec 29, 2017 Sophie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I wonder, more and more, about what we call memory. The burden - the role - of memory is to clarify the event, to make it useful, even, to make it bearable. But memory is, also, what the imagination makes, or has made, of the event, and, the more dreadful the event, the more likely it is that the memory will distort, or efface it. It is, thus, perfectly possible - indeed, it is common - to act on the genuine results of the event, at the same time that the memory manufactures quite another one,

...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Medina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: must-re-read

Dear Lawd Jesus!!!!! DamndamndamnJAMES!

It was a song, a poem, an enterprise of faith. I am too attached to this book, the mechanics of Baldwin's writing, and its content to be very objective in reviewing it.
Suffice it to say, if you have no knowledge of traditional gospel music, you will miss the grace of this text. As a music head & a girl grow'd up in the Chu'ch, this hit home....but beyond that...aaahhh!
I cannot, it is too close to me.
This is one of my favorite books ever and will ...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Ryan Milbrath added it

By 1979 James Baldwin had produced some of his finest works in literature. His semi-autobiographical novel Go tell it on the Mountain, the beautifully written and symbolic Giovanni’s Room, and his collection of essays in Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time provided a highly personal looks into race relations, homosexuality, and existential questions of identity.

Written in 1979, Just Above My Head marks Baldwin’s second to last novel. Like his seminal works, this novel deals with issues By 1979 James Baldwin had produced some of his finest works in literature. His semi-autobiographical novel Go tell it on the Mountain, the beautifully written and symbolic Giovanni’s Room, and his collection of essays in Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time provided a highly personal looks into race relations, homosexuality, and existential questions of identity.

Written in 1979, Just Above My Head marks Baldwin’s second to last novel. Like his seminal works, this novel deals with issues of race, homosexuality, and identity. I think I would render the novel to merely a shadow of its former self if I attempted to describe the intricate plot line of the four books inside. Grief, incest, civil rights, religion, faith, identity, race relations, gospel and jazz culture, the rise from poverty to excess, family relations, and most important love all share a spotlight in Baldwin’s work. Just Above My Head offers a veritable buffet of literary motifs and metaphors. In the end, despite Baldwin’s personal condemnation of the Christianity, I believe he still retains, by the end of the novel, a deep hope that some, to borrow of a phrase from the late Hunter S. Thompson, being is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. Our fates, our identity, our deep and often painful relations between people are guided by an even greater, mysterious force just above our heads. I enjoyed this work, though I must say it is a time investment. To milk the full experience from the bosom of this book, does require dedication.

Technically speaking the book, to me, is like poetry. I admire Baldwin’s style of writing. He combines literary styles noted from the Harlem Renaissance, modernist techniques, and even blues-poetry. His samples of Gospel songs add to the metaphors present in the book and his diversity of wordplay is inspiring sometimes. I’ve always said Baldwin, like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Hunter S. Thompson are some of the most quotable writers that ever existed. Just Above My Head does not refute this claim. Baldwin, in true literary fashion, crushes the reader with emotion and style.

...more

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Dec 15, 2009 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-favorites

This is my favorite of James Baldwin's novels, and as I think about it, it may be my favorite novel period.

I'm a fan of Crunch, one of the beautifully wrought characters in this book, and certainly one of the most soulful character names ever. I had the great pleasure of telling that to the author at a book signing. He signed my book, "To David, a fan of Crunch, peace, JB"

I remember that moment vividly because James Baldwin radiated an intense, kind and intelligent vivacity unlike any I've ...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Danielle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: readsoullit, james-baldwin, 2014, favorites, own

I just so happened to finish this book on the anniversary of Jimmy's death. And, in some way, it's fitting.

I really have no words to express how I feel right now. I loved it.

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Jul 29, 2019 Emma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature, african-american-lit, lgbt, characters-to-die-for, favourites, the-very-wine-of-blessedness, to-read-again-and-again, 1950-1990

Thank you, Mr. Baldwin, for making me weep in the morning.

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Jan 12, 2017 Sofia rated it really liked it

Shelves: br, 2017

Baldwin examines the way to live:

With hope or without. This is an epic tragedy because Baldwin presents both hope, dreams, wishes for the future and at the same time brings us down to the ground with the truths, the truths behind the civil rights battle, (view spoiler), the truths of daily life, the truth of life and death. Tragic because the American black world is a world of
Baldwin examines the way to live:

With hope or without. This is an epic tragedy because Baldwin presents both hope, dreams, wishes for the future and at the same time brings us down to the ground with the truths, the truths behind the civil rights battle, (view spoiler), the truths of daily life, the truth of life and death. Tragic because the American black world is a world of deep violent injustice with no re-course, so in addition to the usual tragedy of life, they have this added dark burden. Hope because it is either hope for better, continue step after step, or stop and die. Which is the way forward? He examines these points through his characters, reminding us that the basic truth of life, death comes to all black or white and maybe Baldwin’s beautiful intimate moments is him saying, grab the moment, live the moment because the end will come anyway.

With religion or without - through his stories Baldwin presents religion as either a dress, a sanctified dress to be put on to be ‘seen’, to attain grace through membership of a group, where the outer appearance of piousness counts. Or religion as a ‘lived’ in dress, put on daily, shown through our daily love and interactions with each other. I do not get the feeling that he has taken a definite decision whether Christian beliefs have helped the Black man in America. I do get the feeling that his way is more the way of choosing a religion that helps us live together, to survive, to continue, rather than a religion which demands, enslaves and dictates.

I do not think that he gives a definite answer of what to do, how to live, but through his examination we can continue to see, ask, delve into the why and the how of our lives. Makes me appreciate my moments of happiness more, makes me want to grab them and hold them because these precious moments leave and we might not get them again.

This long book is filled with lots of stories tied in with Baldwin’s musings, philosophy. The stories flowed, the philosophy got disjointed stuck in between the stories. The start and the overall tone cast a shadow over the book. The stories themselves reminded me of the compact direct punches of Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk, my favourite Baldwins.

Another Baldwin read with Maya

More than fits slot 36. A book written by someone you admire. ...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Craig Werner rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, african-american

I read Just Above My Head the week it came out--I'd just moved to Mississippi and was in a major transition in my life. I've read it often sense, and thought of it very often. Re-reading it thirty-five years later in very different geographical, social, political, psychological and political contexts, it remains as powerful as it was the first time. It's nice to see the large number of five star ratings on Goodreads since the critics, both at the time and now, have never given it the recognition I read Just Above My Head the week it came out--I'd just moved to Mississippi and was in a major transition in my life. I've read it often sense, and thought of it very often. Re-reading it thirty-five years later in very different geographical, social, political, psychological and political contexts, it remains as powerful as it was the first time. It's nice to see the large number of five star ratings on Goodreads since the critics, both at the time and now, have never given it the recognition it deserves. Much of that's the result of Baldwin's radically *black* and musical and morally uncompromising style. You can't reduce it to a formal masterpiece (as you can with Go Tell It On the Mountain) or a political statement (like some managed to do with The Fire Next Time or Another Country). Just Above My Head demands that we look seriously in our mirrors and at the many disasters visited upon the world with our active or passive acquiescence. I've been teaching it in a mixed Afro-American Studies/English class and the primary response from the (absolutely first-rate) group of students has been "wow, this feels absolutely contemporary." Amen.

One of the half dozen books that have been most important to me over the years, largely because it refuses to let me slip into complacency.

On a more literary level, Just Above My Head is a recapitulation of the central themes of Baldwin's career: the confrontations with the church and the South from Go Tell It On the Mountain; the complications of shame and guilt and freedom embedded in sexuality (in Baldwin's case homosexuality) from Giovanni's room; the musical quest of "Sonny's Blues"; the civil rights politics of "Blues For Mister Charlie"; the shadow of death and sexual violence in Another Country; the burden of fame from Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone; the emerging awareness of black women's particular situation in IF Beale Street Could Talk." It's Baldwin looking back at himself, his world, his changing sense of what art can do. ...more

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Jan 11, 2008 jessi lee rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: you.

Recommended to jessi lee by: it was a gift from kate, of course

something about this book moved me so deeply. and it started in the very beginning of the book, when the main character is hit so hard by grief. i cry and cry when i read this.

i think that i love baldwin's books about the strength of family the best--ones that follow queer families and chosen families and birth families through long, complicated relationships, and historical events, and coping with tremendous trauma and loss, and loving one another to various degrees of effectiveness through ...more

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Jun 28, 2019 Pete rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

James Baldwin always writes in such an honest and tragically beautiful way. Baldwin should be required reading.

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Jun 19, 2019 Scott Stelter rated it it was amazing

Absolutely incredible. Seemed to recap a lot of themes and plots in Baldwin's earlier works, sort of a greatest hits album, but not at all in a bad way. Beautifully written. Fascinating theme of incoherence of self, internal/external, identity, community, love, purpose, family.

Baldwin's descriptions of places remind me of Joan Didion's essays, how expertly crafted they capture the feel of a place.

Had trouble sleeping after finishing this because I didn't want to stop being in this world.

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Feb 20, 2012 Larry Benjamin rated it really liked it

Let me first say that I gave “Just Above My Head” 4 stars instead of 5 only because I rated it against James Baldwin’s other works, rather than against other books I’ve read, which is how I typically rate books. That said Mr. Baldwin is an amazing writer. But, “Just Above My Head,” the story of a gay gospel singer as told by his grieving older brother, felt overly long, delving into the details of the lives of secondary characters such as the child evangelist (and Hall’s first love) Julia.

The Let me first say that I gave “Just Above My Head” 4 stars instead of 5 only because I rated it against James Baldwin’s other works, rather than against other books I’ve read, which is how I typically rate books. That said Mr. Baldwin is an amazing writer. But, “Just Above My Head,” the story of a gay gospel singer as told by his grieving older brother, felt overly long, delving into the details of the lives of secondary characters such as the child evangelist (and Hall’s first love) Julia.

The novel takes place just after desegregation and as a result paints a stark vivid picture of the fear and tension of the period. Yet it also feels timeless as when older brother Hall, who works in advertising describes the role of advertising in American lives: “…one learns, through advertising, that it is, therefore absolutely forbidden to the American people to be gloomy, private, tense, possessed; to stink, even a little, at any time; to grow gray, to wrinkle, to be sexless; to have unsmiling children; to be lusterless of eye, hair, teeth; to be flabby of breast, or bottom; to be gloomy, to know despair…” And again that timelessness is present when Hall describes Arthur’s fame: “…fame cannot be summoned; it strikes, like a hammer, and the trick thereafter, is to stand up under what has seemed to be a mortal blow.”

That the gayness of Arthur Montana and several other characters is not described as particularly remarkable or even really frowned upon makes the novel seem contemporary. The gay characters seem to exist in their own higher plane, untouchable, beyond judgment: “They were called the ‘lovebirds’ they were called ‘Romeo and Romeo.’ Other people had words for whatever it was, too bad, too sad—they were not to be found in that dictionary.” And, “…Crunch, before their eyes seemed to become lord of a vast and beautiful territory. Arthur was his princedom…”

I found the last part of the book most troubling. Arthur goes to Europe leaving Hall behind, yet Hall, who admits he was not there, recounts the in detail, Arthur’s story in Europe as if he was there. Also the love story which is central to the novel almost seems like a footnote to Hall’s larger story. Yet it is when he is describing the relationship between Jimmy and Arthur, which lasted 14 years, that the book really came alive for me.

“… Arthur could live on stones—he sought love everywhere, but he could live on stones.” Yet when he meets Jimmy his love is immediate, and desire tight on the heels of that love, frightening: “And this desire caused him to panic. He signaled the waitress, and ordering drinks in order to give himself time to catch his breath. To steady his hands, to conquer the violence between his legs, the violence of hope in his heart.“

Baldwin’s prose is quite simply luminous, evocative: “His eyes moved with the splendid, reckless precision of a small bird, an insert with translucent wings, lighting on this, on that, a twig, a stone, a branch, you---and gone, circling, circling back, again, gone again: making of air, light, space and danger, a province, a kingdom—you, rooted to the earth, follow without moving, stare.”

Like Fitzgerald, like Woolf, Baldwin doesn’t just arrange words on a page; he makes them sing. And for that reason, for me, he remains a favorite. And an inspiration

...more

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Jun 23, 2018 Maud rated it did not like it

Shelves: stand-alone

I finished it, finally! To keep things short: I hated this book.

I was bored from beginning till end. There were parts that I could have enjoyed, like Julia and her youth or Hall's trip to Korea, but Baldwin decided to focus on other things. Baldwin mentions some shocking things, like Julia and her father, but never really handles the aftermath of it. That felt like an easy and cheap way to shock readers. Same thing with Hall and his trip to Korea during the war. Baldwin decided that the book ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Myles rated it really liked it

Bloated, spotty, with diminishing returns. Also a beautiful picture of brotherhood and blackness and loss and love.

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Sep 08, 2012 Eric rated it it was amazing

John Coletran's A Love Supreme, is considered his defining work. A four part suite album, separated into tracks, "Acknowledgement", Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm", all chocked full of love, Just like this novel.

The heroines and heroes are unabashed "race people". America doesn't like “race people”. So these cats ( it's the sixties) immediately bond tight. They’re all in love with each other. Yet still searching for something greater than themselves while secretly in their own way running John Coletran's A Love Supreme, is considered his defining work. A four part suite album, separated into tracks, "Acknowledgement", Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm", all chocked full of love, Just like this novel.

The heroines and heroes are unabashed "race people". America doesn't like “race people”. So these cats ( it's the sixties) immediately bond tight. They’re all in love with each other. Yet still searching for something greater than themselves while secretly in their own way running from race wondering is it possible to simply be human. This has to mean leaving America. Often they’ve crossed the porous boarder to physical love, when they just up and leave. This causes just more hurt and pain on top of being Black.

Yet with love so profound, they remain deeply connected and when they meet again, there is no bitterness, just long conversations about their journeys, and what they’ve learned. Which is their Blackness makes them the marvel of the world as Americas most peculiar, haunted, and remarkable creation. So, there is no running unless to insanity. Nor would a sane person trade their Black beauty for any thing.

Then they settle into their destinies, so they think because it seems easy now. They’re strong race people, older and more mature now. And it’s the mid 1960 so Martin and Malcolm are still here. And the second wave (they don’t know its the final wave) Angela Davis and Assata Olugbala Shakur, etc., are just getting warmed up. And their combined elbows have opened a wider space for “race people” to educate, advocate and grow. Today this space continues to dwindle especially with our post-race-era President, which became the trade off for his election. But this novel ends long before this.

What’s also fascinating is how this novel ( written by a gay Black male) changes bounderies of masculinity . All the race people in this novel, women and men, are deeply masculine in their response to the full tides of white supremacy. But the Black women are one dimensional in this roll, The Black men are highly sensitive and often feminine. The main character is the narrator’s brother, Arthur, who is a singer. But not the typical blues singer, Arthur is the leader of a gospel quartet named "The Trumpets of Zion". The rest of the members are from hard scrabble Harlem, which makes it easier to see why they're "of" the Black church as singers, but not in it’s pews. They have street names, like Crunch and Peanut. But they're tighter than brothers. And these lines blur often, sometimes in bed.

Unlike the typical casting of Black men they wear their pain and suffering openly as opposed to hiding it in a bottle, needle, or cloaked in violence.

And when they don’t vocalize their pain, each member is on the look out for signs of it, in the others eyes, voices, and movements. And through singing they broadcast the primordial screams and cries of those Africans locked in the hauls of slave ships on the middle passage, and in transition to becoming the “Black race" on the plantations, losing husbands, wives, children, sisters, brothers, limbs, the whips and chains, etc. In fact at the beginning of the novel, Arthur with the Trumpets of Zion are singing in a church. Gospel songs are mostly beseeching, imploring, and begging God to intervene, for his mercy, to have pity, etc. But this song aint about begging. This song paints a picture of the midnight hour, before the situation slides with the clock’s hands from desperate to the despicably horrid. This song aint about prayer. It’s about the faithful believer cashing in all their chips. It’s the mother on the slave ship with child, demanding,

“Savior, Don’t You Pass Me by! Savior! Savior! Savior! Don't you [dare] Pass Me by!” Arthur's brother narrates that his brother [ Arthur] the lead singer, seems "alone, eyes closed meaning every instant of it, beginning high, like a scream, then dropping low, like a whisper in a dungeon, "Don’t You Pass Me By! Savior, Don't You Pass Me By!”

In the world James Baldwin creates, a Black man in New York City, can walk into a crowded bar, as a stranger on Christmas eve, meet the Black bartender and immediately bond so intensely, that the former stranger tells the bartende, he's bringing his girl friend back to meet him on Christmas Day. And the Bartender says "You better do just that, Baby". And not only does. But days later, comes back into the bar alone, with a look that the bartender can immediately recognize as utter despair. The bartender rushes, catches, and bear-hugs him into the bar's back-room, so he can cry and get it together, while the bartender leaves, prepares, and bring back a especial Bloody Mary for him to drink.

This might sound cheesy, but James Baldwin pulls it off as a cogent response to such massive Black suffering, because this book goes deep with it. One of the sub-plots, is a fourteen year old child prodigy evangelical preacher, Julia, who’s not only the "meal ticket" for the whole family, but through manipulation and passive aggression runs the house and ends up brining death to another. And her own insanity, like Toni Morrison's Pecola in the "Bluest Eye", as she falls victim as well.

There are revelations from the novel’s "strong man" Crunch. Before he even reveals it, the inflection in his voice makes Arthur's "heart jump". Because Black males in this novel, are so connected, that they spot those catastrophic announcements before they even arise Crunch says "every time I see my Momma", he says so quietly, that Arthur's heart leaps almost in terror, " My Moma's a whore, really. I love her, but that's what she is. It's funny, I don't think I'd mind, if only she didn't mind. I don't think the other kids would mind-she's our Momma. She aint got nothing to be ashamed off. She did every thing she could for us, it aint her fault the world is like it is"

Bell hooks writes authentically about Black on Black love as a scholar. But James Baldwin's characters live it. So boldly that I see clearly the total lack of it in reality, and it's lethal and detrimental consequences for Black people and America as a nation. I also understanding the subconscious yearning for this connection. Now, finally I understand the reason why Black men and boys born and raised in those "hard places and spaces", no matter if they’ve left our are still there, nod to each other when we pass on the street. Because of the final thing about this book, which is what goes unresolved. The randomness of death with Black males here one minute and gone the next. Like the character who’s standing with friends, deep down south, excuses himself to go to the outhouse and never returns. Or the character that every body loves and protects, who gains it all, yet dies alone, young on the basement floor of a dirty bar in another country for no fully explained reason.
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Feb 16, 2019 Endon rated it it was amazing

It took me three months to read this because it is long and so dense with complex and nuanced relationships. I was glad to get to spend that much time with it because I think it needs that slow pace.

This book contains some of the most beautiful and moving descriptions of music ive ever read. They are made beautiful by being deeply contextualized in relationships, so that when the paragraphs break into snippets of songs it feels as if the music is a way of having a conversation otherwise ...more

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May 29, 2016 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: mgr

This is my first James Baldwin read, however, I will need to read some of his books before this one. One of the initial books that he became famous for, because from reading this novel I can see that he is a very artistic writer. I just cannot see giving the story more than 3 stars. I like that he developed most of the characters very well and brought me into their world, however, I felt I was brought in quite a bit, but was left hanging at points. I did not like that Hall was the narrator ...more

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May 13, 2012 Joe Rasmussen rated it it was amazing

Just an absolutely remarkable book. Took me about 3 months to finish, but one of the most rewarding books I've ever picked up. Some of the most beautiful, agonizing, and heartbreaking writing I've ever read.

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Mar 14, 2019 Cindy Leighton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: race-and-ethnicity, lgbtqia, social-justice

Life-changing. James Baldwin at his most eloquent, his most heartbreaking, his most loving. I was trying to pull out a few quotes to give you a taste of his beauty and elegance - but it is impossible to rip any short piece from its context; and my quotes became longer and longer until I could not reasonably decide where to stop.

Baldwin is definitely one of the most eloquent writers I have ever read on any topic. I am not a man, not gay, not Black, not raised in the Black church, yet his writing ...more

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Sep 22, 2019 Joe Kraus rated it liked it

Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is one of the three or four greatest short stories I know. I’ve read it at least a dozen times, often to prepare for teaching it, and I have teared up almost every time. It takes a perspective “we” can almost know – a middle-aged African-American high school teacher who’s served in the army – and has him serve as “our” guide to the great artistry and deep hurt of his jazz-inspired brother. The story somehow collapses the whole of the brothers’ lives – there’s a line Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is one of the three or four greatest short stories I know. I’ve read it at least a dozen times, often to prepare for teaching it, and I have teared up almost every time. It takes a perspective “we” can almost know – a middle-aged African-American high school teacher who’s served in the army – and has him serve as “our” guide to the great artistry and deep hurt of his jazz-inspired brother. The story somehow collapses the whole of the brothers’ lives – there’s a line about our narrator catching Sonny when he takes his first steps – and even echoes the deeper experience of African-Americans as a whole. And it also may be the greatest primer to the possibilities of jazz that anyone has ever written.

I’ve put “we” and “our” in quotes because It’s a deep question when it comes to defining who it is Baldwin is writing for. I think “Sonny’s Blues” is powerful in part because it’s a supposedly marginal figure who’s able to make his story accessible to a generic – read “white” as near synonym – audience. Of course, it’s more than that as well, and part of its power is the way it ultimately makes me realize how wide the world of perspective is beyond my own.

This novel comes more than two decades later, but I think “Sonny’s Blues” informs it. The novel begins as almost a reprise, with our narrator, Hall, writing of how he learned of his brother Arthur’s death. (“Sonny’s Blues” begins with the narrator learning of Sonny’s arrest for heroin possession.) Then it spends a good chunk of the first “book” exploring how they came to be estranged and how they came to understand one another.

This novel is, in its way, even more ambitious, though. It deals not just with the African-American experience and the power of music (Arthur is a successful gospel singer) but also the civil rights struggle, sexual abuse, and homosexuality as an emerging cultural possibility.

This is an important book, as is anything Baldwin ever wrote. And, since it is Baldwin, there are moments of soaring prose. (Consider two quick gems: “Music does not begin as a song. It can become a song, but it begins as a cry.” Or “Our suffering is our bridge to one another. Everyone must cross this bridge.”) And, given that this is written in 1979, it’s an important landmark in naming the LGBT experience as authentic to the American experience as a whole.

This is not, in the end, though, a great novel. Its ambition weighs it down throughout, and it seems often to be reminding us of all it’s trying to do. I often found myself admiring some of the characters’ insights, but I seldom found myself caught up in the story itself. I felt good about being someone who was reading it, but I didn’t enjoy the reading as I would have hoped.

For starters, the dialogue here is clumsy. Characters don’t talk to each other so much as make speeches in front of one another. (The grand quality of many of them reminds me of the social realism novels of the 1930s, of something James Farrell might have written in the years before he discovered James Joyce.) Or, when they aren’t, they’re moving the narrative forward in awkward ways, introducing each other and explaining things in dialogue that we could get more efficiently through other narrative forms.

And then there are the explicit sex scenes. I have no problem with the content, but they often feel almost clinical, like we are being asked to acknowledge that, yes, human animals experience arousal and lust of this sort. They make me think a little of the great Monty Python skit where, for a sex education class, John Cleese, as a professor, invites his wife into the room, and they proceed to go at it on a desk. Then he interrupts himself occasionally to scold the students for laughing. Maybe nothing about this books says “ ’70s novel” more than that, but it feels dated and awkward. It’s great that he’s showing that we should be no more shocked by gay sex than by hetero, but neither comes across as authentic.

But the biggest problem I have is with the fundamental narrative structure. Our narrator is Hall, but it seems as if Baldwin is bored with him. (There’s even a part, at the start of the final book, when Hall asks himself why he is trying to tell this story – a telling bit of uncertainty – and he concludes that it’s to make sense of Arthur’s story more than his own.) Most of this story, then, concerns Arthur – or others like their neighbor and some-time lover Julia – often in private moments Hall could never have known.

In other words, Hall is a narrator telling us about events he can’t possibly have seen, which undermines him as a narrator/character.

Narrative technology has come a long way in the forty years since this came out. I think of what I like to call the rhizomatic novel where we get a series of only tangentially connected stories in a single volume, stories that, in conversation, tell more than any one figure could know. Or we get the proliferation of excellent short story cycles that have come out since. Instead, this seems like a novel trapped in a form of story-telling that can’t quite encompass it.

There is greatness here. I suspect there’s greatness in anything Baldwin ever put down on paper. But this work as a whole doesn’t come together as it might. I am glad I read it, but I am also glad I am finished reading it.
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Apr 11, 2017 Deb rated it it was amazing

A good friend from graduate school gave me this book and said it would astonish me. She was right. This is an astonishing novel, and I think I've taken so long to to review it (six months) because even an attempt to sum up my feelings or analyze the text is incredibly intimidating. So I'll focus on the aspects of the novel that I admired most, that I remember vividly even so long after putting it down.

Just Above My Head is a book about race and gender. It's also a coming-of-age novel; a portrait A good friend from graduate school gave me this book and said it would astonish me. She was right. This is an astonishing novel, and I think I've taken so long to to review it (six months) because even an attempt to sum up my feelings or analyze the text is incredibly intimidating. So I'll focus on the aspects of the novel that I admired most, that I remember vividly even so long after putting it down.

Just Above My Head is a book about race and gender. It's also a coming-of-age novel; a portrait of an artist (and the artist's brother); a war novel; a Civil Rights novel; a novel about remembrance; a novel about the making (and unmaking) (and remaking) of America; and, above all, a book about love: the love of parents for their children, the love of children for their siblings, and the love of lovers (and ex-lovers). I have never before read a book that ties all of these often incredibly different strains of narrative together in such a natural, meaningful way. It is epic in size and ambition, and unlike many epics it rarely feels unruly and never loses the glue that ties everything together.

That glue is the novel's vibrant humanity. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never read a novel that was more human than this one. Its denizens are not characters or ideas or representatives or ideologies; they are full-blooded people who love and lose, who make mistakes and who come through for each other when it seems no one else will. Baldwin masterfully overturns notions of what people should and could be. His men can be violent and gentle; his women can be powerful and vulnerable. There are no easy answers or simple characters. Everyone is almost frustratingly human, and that means it is hard to guess what will happen next or judge whether something is right or wrong (the answer? usually, yes, and yes, and no, and no). With this novel, Baldwin makes the case for himself as the great writer of the "human condition," with none of the racist, sexist or ethnocentric implications that term carries from the 1950s. His is an angry humanism, marked by love and alienation and injustice and hatred. In other words, a humanism perfect for today. ...more

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Jul 09, 2019 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bisexual-characters, woc-list-2015-read, woc-list-2015

There is an incredible empathy running through this book. It manifests most plainly in the time the narrator spends inside the heads and hearts of the other characters. There's such interesting POV movement throughout the book, where long sections read like omniscient narration then some first-person language will remind us that it is Hall writing the story, even if he is writing about events he didn't witness and thoughts in other heads. There are no two-dimensional characters, and they sure ...more

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Oct 16, 2015 Andrea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-again

Update: I have just finished listening to the audiobook and this book is as good as I remember. Such beautiful language, characters, and story. It’s one of those books where, when I come to the end, I want to start all over again at the beginning, because I don’t want it to end.

I have read this book so many times--it is one of my all-time favorites. I can't even begin to estimate the profound impact it has had on me.

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Feb 22, 2010 Melissa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbt

This is my favorite book by James Baldwin. Hands. Down. Baldwin had this ability to write beautifully tragic scenes and still make you laugh. That was this ENTIRE book.

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About James Baldwin

James Baldwin

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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. He was the eldest of nine children; his stepfather was a ...more

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Quotes from Just Above My Head

“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years” — 50 likes

“If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--concerning the treacherous role that memory plays in a human life, consider how relentlessly the water of memory refuses to break, how it impedes that journey into the air of time. Time: the whisper beneath that word is death. With this unanswerable weight hanging heavier and heavier over one's head, the vision becomes cloudy, nothing is what it seems...
How then, can I trust my memory concerning that particular Sunday afternoon?...Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true--anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other--beneath the face of the beloved, however ancient, ruined, and scarred, is the face of the baby your love once was, and will always be, for you. Love serves, then, if memory doesn't, and passion, apart from its tense relation to agony, labors beneath the shadow of death. Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone.” — 48 likes

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