If Beale Street Could Talk: James Baldwin (Penguin Modern Classics)

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If Beale Street Could Talk" is Baldwin's 13th book and it might have been written, if not revised for publication, in the 1950's. Its suffering, bewildered people, trapped in what is referred to as the "garbage dump" of praised without being read, which must be the worst possible fate for a serious writer. And, of course, there are circles, perhaps those nearest home, in which he cannot ever win--for there will be people who resent the mere fact of his Narrated mostly from 19 year old Tish's view, this contextually (written in the 1970s) stunning work tells the story of love in an arena of severe and overt social and racial injustice for Afro Americans in an urban America. Tish's sculptor lifelong friend and now boyfriend Fonny is brashly wrongly accused of a dark crime, and Tish and the families seek to do all they possibly can against the immovable force of corrupt racist individuals and institutions. As the blurb states the story of the rollercoaster of emotions and actions of the main couple, as well as some of the family's evokes a sense of the blues!

Thompson, Anne (October 10, 2018). "Annapurna's Stunning Shakeup: What the Hell Is Megan Ellison Doing?". IndieWire . Retrieved October 10, 2018. I'm reasonably sure the above song list is correct or nearly correct. I'm also reasonably certain I probably missed two or three songs because on several occasions, I found what I thought was a song reference, but I couldn't determine what song it was referring to. Tish then remembers asking Fonny whether his parents ever had sex. Fonny responds that they do, but it is unlike the sex that he and Tish have with each other. There is an extended quotation of Fonny's description of his parents' sexual encounters, in which Fonny explains how they liken their sexual relations to a union with the Christian God. Fonny then expresses his gratitude at his father for not leaving him. He believes that if he didn't exist, Frank would have left his family a long time ago. Tish then meditates on the type of love that allows people to laugh together as they make love to each other, and how that is what she and Fonny have. She sees her relationship with Fonny in this way as special: "The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there" (17). 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,Fonny and Tish have known each other nearly their entire lives. Sometimes relationships like this evolve into being friends or at least acquaintances for life. Sometimes they become lovers, and when lightning strikes the same place twice, they become lovers and best friends. This novel has a feeling of urgency, despair and hope. It is written with the passion and rage from what I imagine to be the depths of Baldwin’s soul. He is unflinching in his intent to shed light on the mean injustices and rank corruption of an America that was yet to uphold the hard-fought rights of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s often quite harsh. Unnecessarily so? I really don’t think so. He understood and he was outraged. "… New York must be the ugliest and the dirtiest city in the world. It must have the ugliest buildings and the nastiest people. It’s got to have the worst cops. If any place is worse, it’s got to be so close to hell that you can smell the people frying. And, come to think of it, that’s exactly the smell of New York in the summertime."

A second narrative line unfolds at the same time as the first, as Tish recalls the beginnings of her relationship with Fonny. She describes their noticing each other as children, their growing closeness as teens, and the moment when they both realized that their connection went deeper than either had believed. As she recalls their life together, Tish also describes Fonny’s passion for creating art out of wood or stone; the intensity of their sexual relationship; and how a friendly white landlord made it possible for them to start thinking about their future as a married couple. A love story that is HILARIOUS, full of superb dialogue, and critiques of criminal justice in the US that could have been written in 2025 (no typo). A book that also lives up to its eponymous street through James Baldwin's effortlessly poetic prose, hard earned wisdom, and blues references to spare. On August 29, 2017, Stephan James was set to star. [5] In September 2017, KiKi Layne and Teyonah Parris were also added, with Layne in the female lead. [6] [7]Tish goes home and tells her mother, Sharon, that she’s pregnant, and it goes quite well. In fact, Sharon isn’t even surprised, and she urges Tish to refrain from feeling like a “bad girl.” Later, Joseph, her father, echoes this sentiment, and Tish’s sister, Ernestine, tells her to “unbow [her] head.” After Tish’s family toasts to her pregnancy, Joseph calls Frank and tells him to come over, saying he should bring Fonny’s mother, Mrs. Hunt, and his two sisters, Adrienne and Sheila. Sharon travels to Victoria's native Puerto Rico to plead with her to change her testimony. She tries to convince her she mistakenly identified Fonny as her rapist, but Victoria refuses. Questioning whether Victoria could have seen her rapist's face in the dark, Victoria says the police told her to identify Fonny in a line-up, and she did so. When Sharon gently touches her, Victoria begins to scream. An elderly woman overhears the commotion and comes to take Victoria away. Discouraged by the seeming hopelessness of his case and the constant trial delays, Tish gives birth to her son without Fonny, who eventually accepts a plea deal. If Beale Street Could Talk is a 1974 novel by American writer James Baldwin. His fifth novel (and 13th book overall), it is a love story set in Harlem in the early 1970s. [1] [2] The title is a reference to the 1916 W.C. Handy blues song " Beale Street Blues", named after Beale Street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee.

This was a riveting read. Baldwin’s honest and emotion-laden writing grabs you from the start. He tells you a simple story of gross injustices inflicted on people of color in New York City in the 60s and 70s. Weaving into this narrative family love, passionate love between two young people, hope and despair, dogmatic prejudices and forgiveness, he transports you to a world that makes you throw your hands up in disbelief at the injustices and at the same time marvel at humanity. Make no mistake, this is grim, harrowing and hard-hitting - all the more so that though first published in 1974, almost 50 years later we're still struggling with the same issues of racial injustice and incarceration. Indeed, one of the technical flaws of the book is that acute analyses of structural/institutional racism have to be placed in the mouth of 19 year old Tish when it's clear that this is Baldwin's own voice speaking to us with clarity and lyrical power: 'the kids had been told they weren't worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. They struggled, they struggled, but they fell, like flies, and they congregated on the garbage heaps of their lives, like flies.'Brody, Richard (December 14, 2018). " 'The Front Row: The Politics of Memory in Barry Jenkins's "If Beale Street Could Talk"' ". The New Yorker . Retrieved May 25, 2019. I was also more than a little disturbed by the violence on women in this story, set in New York City, and the excuses that are made for the “comeuppance” of the women in the community—the multiple occurrences of women being slapped into compliance by the male characters and the mob mentality of women that Mr. Baldwin presents here, in the guise of excusing certain acts of violence on women because they were committed by other women. In short: being “bitch-slapped” by other “bitches.” Before I started reading James Baldwin's novel titled If Beale Street Could Talk I found it curious that the book was written about a Beale Street in New York City while the location of the movie was the Beale Street in New Orleans. A search for Beale Street in Google Maps revealed a dozen or more cities that have a Beale Street. All this piqued my interest in Baldwin's book and provided fodder for enthusiastic conversations with my wife. The only real criticism is that I wanted to spend longer with Tish and Fonny as they struggle on into the future. While climbing up the stairs to her apartment, Tish thinks about her plan to live in the East Village, which is in downtown Manhattan, with Fonny because it's cheaper than living in the projects, and Fonny would have more room for his art. Tish also considers the East Village as nicer than other places where they could live in Harlem, which she considers to be "worse than the projects" (31). When Tish arrives at her apartment, no one is there, but five minutes later her mother arrives, carrying a shopping bag. Upon seeing her daughter, Sharon asks Tish how Fonny is doing and whether the lawyer has gone to visit him yet. When Tish says no, Sharon sighs and moves to start putting the groceries away.