More Baldwin, Better Baldwin

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks, [2000], c1956.
169 p. ; 21 cm.

After reading Go Tell it On the Mountain during the summer, a teacher at our school suggested that I read Giovanni's Room.  She said it was her favorite Baldwin novel.

The novel, published in 1956, is a powerful story of a young gay man struggling to come to terms with love, identity and convention in 1950s Paris.  The novel is passionate and heartfelt, and is one of the great early gay novels rich in character and the nuances of Parisian expatriate and gay life in the 1950s.

I really loved how subtly Baldwin is able to convey the complexities of characters trying to unravel their identities and live in authentic ways.  He also conveys the self-deception and destructiveness that homophobia and conventional mores foster in those characters.

I would definitely recommend Giovanni's Room to anyone wanting to explore the novels of James Baldwin.