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

Baldwin, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140187979 ISBN 13: 9780140187977

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

Synopsis

Tish is nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. The two families struggle win justice for Fonny.

About this title

Review

If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family (Joyce Carol Oates)

Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten "the black experience" into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life-but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes (Vanity Fair)

Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing (Cornel West)

The spirit of Jimmy's work is of a high moral prophetic vision (Amriri Baraka)

One of the few essential novelists of our time (New Statesman)

From the Back Cover

'One of the few essential novelists of our time' New Statesman

Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish, nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

'If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family' Joyce Carol Oates

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140187979
• ISBN 13: 9780140187977
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192