If Beale Street Could Talk

I like James Baldwin! When I read him, I must remember the time period. He was a courageous Black Man who loved his race and culture. This book is still relevant to what is going on in our society today. It is so sad that women and people of color are still dealing with many of these issues today. It is so sad that our current president and the self interest of him and his family have been allowed to take precedence over what's best for this country and it's people. This novel helped me gain some comparative historical vs current perspective on these issues.

I think the most brilliant part about this book is how it humanizes this part of America we hear of but never get the details of. This part I talk of is the downfall of the falsely accused and wrongfully convicted. The story accounts the story of "Tish" and "Fonny," two young African Americans who are in love but separated by forces outside of their control. The story has its ups and downs, the ups do not outweigh the downs, unfortunately. It is a heart-clenching story where you want everything to go right, but reality hits and you realize that it probably won't. It is a realistic account of those that face the effects of wrongful convictions and being black in America. Baldwin does such a beautiful job of storytelling by submerging the reader into the past to be brought back to the reality of the present. I will say, however, that the voice of the narrator(Tish) at times can become overrode by Baldwin's scholarly writing which may make moments of the book feel out of place. On the other hand, the insights where Baldwin goes on his scholarly rants are beautiful and insightful to help bring context to the story and also to the canonical narrative of African Americans.

This is a classic novel that I should've read a long time ago but never did. I'm reading (actually, listening) to it now because the movie adaptation is about to be released. This is a love story complete with the stereotypes of the time. A black man in jail because of a corrupt justice system. A young woman pregnant with the child of the incarcerated. Black families struggling with their morality and with each other. It's been awhile since I heard phrases like "that cat" and "my pad" so it took a minute for my ear to get adjusted to the time travel. Anyway, I'm glad I read it and would recommend that you add this to your reading list, if nothing else than the fact it is a classic novel.

I decided to read the book only cause i saw previews of the movie. I just hope the movie is better than the book. I got confused a lot. Wasn't really sure what the purpose of the story was. I don't know. Some parts were really drew me in, others, not so much. The internal dialogue was distracting because of the constant unfinished or overly thought out, thought. It started to become really annoying. Still trying to figure out what the plot of the story was. Maybe I missed it. Anyway, I'm going to see the movie because they have some phenomenal actors in it. Hopefully I can grasp the concept by "seeing" it.

Just as I expected, literature at its finest. I'd never read a James Baldwin book before but I knew I'd be in for a well written and articulate reading. I'll not describe the story as any Baldwin book is a classic and stands on its own. However, I did wish for a more fulfilling conclusion. Who am I to question the mind of the great Baldwin though.

The narrator's voice is really what compels the narrative forward and gives this book it's quality and distinction.The first 25% of the book is beautiful slice of life from a singular perspective. When the plot really kicks in is when this falters for me. I wanted more there there, more flow. In a way, it feels like Baldwin got sick of writing about the situation he put his characters in.

I decided to read this again after 40 years, because of the movie that recently has been made of the book. This book was given to me by my God sister, when she saw me reading Donald Goines’ books. She said she wanted me to have a better sense of “real” Black books, if I remember correctly. What I know for sure is that Beale Street birthed in me a serious passion for African American Literature.

I’m not sure how—or why—this powerful work of narrative beauty escaped me until now, but I’m certainly grateful that Barry Jenkins’ film adaption has rekindled interest in this narrative. Despite some perplexing inconsistencies in narrative point of view, this story of unconditional love blends themes of romance, race, social class, gender, sexuality, and family in ways that only literary masters can manage. Baldwin was undeniably head of his time.In the early 21st century, this story has become familiar enough. Tish, the young, Black first-person narrator, is pregnant with the child of her lifelong love, Fonny, who has been unjustly imprisoned for the rape of a Puerto Rican woman. As Tish and her family band together to free Fonny, institutionalized racism, economic inequality, and social oppression (not to mention members of Fonny’s own family) conspire to keep the young lovers apart.Baldwin’s prose is by turns lyrical, minimalist, imagistic, and brutally violent. He orchestrates his diction with sublime precision; therefore, I must presume that there is some artistic justification for having Tish narrate scenes (such as Fonny’s private conversations with his friend Daniel, Fonny’s experiences in prison, and her mother’s ordeal in Puerto Rico as she attempts to track down the rape victim) that she could not have possibly witnessed. That stylistic quibble aside, I cannot recall another book this brief (fewer than 200 pages) that permeates with such intensity and insight.

I'll keep this short, but I think this is a truly brilliant book whose greatest strength, for me, lies in the depiction of relationships between the two young lovers and their respective families.The girl's family is loving and supportive whilst the boy's family is more conflicted.There are some wonderful conversations in this book, but the passage I enjoyed the most is concerned with the antagonism between the two families when they meet to discuss how they should deal with the girl's pregnancy The encounter is both physically and verbally pretty brutal and I loved it.If you are someone who is not keen on the use of swear words then you might want to give this a wide birth as they are used quite liberally and with great effect; the book is populated by realistic characters with real and very difficult lives.An ever present throughout the book is a hatred of the racism these characters have to negotiate their lives through.The author himself was a black homosexual civil rights activist and I, as a middle-class white male, couldn't fail to get a real sense of the indignities, wrongs and frustrations heaped on the American black population. I also felt that the voices of the characters were noticeably different from those written by white authors e.g. you wont hear white men referring to each other as "baby".The language employed is not difficult and the book, whilst by no means simple, is a joy to read and I can't for the life of me understand people giving a book of this quality a poor review.

Had I had the time over the last few days, I would have wanted to gobble up this amazing piece of writing on one sitting. It's that good! The narrative concentrates tightly on two people, a young woman and man who have dreams and the simple aspiration of living together and make some of those dreams happen. The main crux though is that they are African Americans in the 1970s, that they've grown up in poor circumstances and that racial hatred is rife. There is no justice protecting the falsely accused Fonny and no peace for Tish who is carrying a child by the time he's incarcerated for a rape allegation.It's a short powerful read that packs a punch, brings alive two individuals who don't give up on each other because sometimes love is all you've got in life.

Written half a century ago and read against the backdrop of “Black Lives Matter” this modern classic is a reminder of the persistence of racial injustice, given added authenticity by the black American author’s personal experience. Nineteen-year-old Tish has a steady job and close-knit family, who accept with almost unbelievable equanimity her unplanned pregnancy, just when her fiancé and childhood sweetheart Fonny, who has ambitions to be a sculptor, has been arrested for a serious crime on a charge trumped up by a vicious racist white police officer. Made all the more poignant by the depth of the couple’s love, this novel is an unflinching portrayal of how the cards may be stacked to destroy the lives of an innocent couple simply because of their colour.The approach is unusual in that the male author sets himself the challenge of getting inside the mind of a young woman, even to the extent of describing her orgasm. James Baldwin is also experimental in the flexible structure of the book. Tish narrates the novel in the first person, presumably to involve the reader in a more vivid experience of the drama, but when it suits him he replaces her voice with his own observations in his own style, as when he launches into an analysis of the mental differences between women and men. To portray events in which, say, Fonny’s friend Daniel is previously framed by the police and put in prison, or Tish’s mother Sharon visits Puerto Rico to make contact with the woman who has been manipulated into picking Fonny out of an identity parade, the author simply takes “writer’s licence” and has Tish describe scenes as if she has witnessed them in person.With strong opening scenes, dialogues and sense of place, as the facts are revealed, I found myself engrossed in how they would play out. Although it seems inevitable that Fonny would be found guilty, would some twist expose a fatal flaw in the prosecution? The sympathetic white lawyer might be prepared to work virtually “pro bono”, but how would Tish’s family and Fonny’s loving but weak father Frank manage to scrape together the money for his bail, without themselves taking to illegal activities which might cause them to fall foul of the law?The “bad” characters are too often caricatures with no redeeming features, like Fonny’s religiously fanatical mother who seems inexplicably hostile towards him – most mothers love their sons. His thinly sketched sisters are also pointlessly disagreeable. Although I am often intrigued by ambiguous or inconclusive situations leaving one free to form one’s own conclusion, in this case I was surprised and disappointed by an ending so abrupt as to seem incomplete. Yet perhaps for Baldwin, the development of specific scenes was more important than the arc of a plot.

I see from the number of reviews and the average rating that the majority of readers have had a different opinion of If Beale Street Could talk than myself. For me, it's another classic that failed to live up to the hype. The story, of a young man wrongly accused of a crime by a racist establishment, has the potential for a powerful novel. Unfortunately, in the telling it lacks conviction. Told in first person by the girlfriend of the accused, even when she isn't present, the book does contain some powerful scenes. However, despite being a short novel, both narrative and dialogue have a tendency to ramble into content with little or no relevance to the plot. It's not badly written (obviously!) but these digressions made it tedious in places. My rating would be 2.5, but it's better than a 2, so I've given it 3.

This was a beautifully written book. It was so unlike anything I have read before. Wonderful to see the world from somebody else’s perspective and gain insight into what life is life for people who are marginalised and fighting prejudice.