Book Review: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin - Entrepreneur Generations

It's not secret that James Baldwin is my favorite writer, from his non-fiction which has changed my life to his captivating fiction like Giovanni's Room and "Sonny's Blues." His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk always passed me by though, despite its brevity (it's only around 200 pages long); however, the news that Barry Jenkins would direct the film version of the novel as his followup to Moonlight (my review here), and that he'd written the screenplay years before, was enough for me to pick it up this summer. I also have been looking for "classic" novels to use in my hybrid AP/MYP course this school year.

And, unsurprisingly, Beale Street is a really beautiful and powerful novel. I'm currently re-reading Adichie's Americanah, which I see as a beautiful old-fashioned love story in a lot of ways, and it strikes me that Baldwin's novel is as beautiful a love story as that one is. The novel is narrated by 19-year old Tish, who is pregnant with her boyfriend Fonnie's child. Fonnie is in prison for raping a Puerto Rican woman, and, of course, he hasn't done it; a corrupt cop has bullied the immigrant victim into fingering him and putting him in prison. His prospects are dim.

Tish and Fonnie are characters we grow to care deeply about; we see them grow from children to teenagers having a sweet affair to young adults who feel a great passion towards each other. Ultimately, the novel is about Tish's love for Fonnie in the face of the huge injustice, and, in depicting this love, often through flashbacks, the novel works because Tish and Fonnie's love is as authentic a love as fiction has ever seen. It helps that Tish is a compelling narrator, as she grows from naiveness to strength and maturity, as she valiantly protects her unborn child while navigating increasingly hopeless circumstances. 

But the novel is, of course, about race and about America just as much as it is about love. Fonnie's circumstances seem hopeless not just because of a racist police officer who wants to get back at a kid who he feels once slighted him, but more because of the systematic racism of the justice system. Tish's parents, and Fonnie's father, angrily and impotently rail against the system, too, and they're older and more bitter than Tish is, to the point where all of them take extreme measures to try to save their son. Tish's mother has an intriguing subplot where she flies to Puerto Rico to confront and persuade the supposed rape victim to recant her accusation of Fonnie, and we see the rape victim as another victim of the racism of America.

A short novel without any chapter breaks, If Beale Street Could Talk reads quickly and I think the students would find it to be a page-turner, if I decide to teach it this year. As usual with Baldwin's writing, there are moments of beauty, but it feels more restrained than much of his writing, probably because his narrator is 19 years old whose education or interest in writing we never know. The ending was frustrating to me, but I see why Baldwin did it; his points are about community and love in the face of injustice, that this is the ultimate defense against it -- even if America still chews up and spits out its victims along the way.

Will the text fit into a course that seeks to get the kids ready for AP, adheres to MYP guidelines, and is an American Literature course? Baldwin is clearly writing about America and its vast complexities and implications here; Tish's mother declares, towards the end of the novel, "Whoever discovered America deserved to be dragged home, in chains, to die," a sentiment I see the kids having an intriguing time debating, especially after reading The Great Gatsby and watching Ava Duvernay's The 13th and then moving onto Lynn Nottage's Sweat. 

This is a curriculum I'm considering:
Kindred (Octavia Butler) - summer reading 
Julius Caesar - seeing it performed in October
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Baldwin)
Sweat (Lynn Nottage)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng)

Maybe something else too. I'm excited to teach this class! And I think James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk will definitely be in there.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2wUlSF8 Book Review: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin - Entrepreneur Generations

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