I just finished reading Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin. It was absolutely sublime and achingly poignant. I know he’s predominantly known as an activist for the black civil rights movement, but his gay identity should be celebrated just as much. He poured all his gay soul into this.
Set against the backdrop of 1950s Paris, the story follows David, a white American man living in France to get away from his problems at home. He meets Giovanni, an alluring and beautiful Italian man who ensnares David into a months long love affair that ends in tragedy. David is also engaged to a woman named Hella, who is touring Spain on her own and will soon reunite with him.
The story deftly explores a range of themes like American culture vs European culture, classism, racism, philosophy. But what i found most striking was Baldwin exploring Masculinity and what it meant to be a man in a world obsessed with heteronormativity. David feels attracted to men and it slowly eats away at him because he so desperately wants to appear as a straight, masculine man, but his affairs with men cause great consternation within him: He is so insecure that he is broken. Despite feeling such extreme highs of love with Giovanni, he pushes him away because it threatens his desire to be a hetereonormative man in an era where being anything other than “A Straight American Man” doomed you to being ostracized.
The novel also explores the gamut of gay men, from the swaggering bravado of masculine men, to the older queens, and to the desperate youth. By the way, this book came out in 1956, yet it feels so modern and relevant. It just shows you what a masterful writer Baldwin was.
I implore you to read it. It’s a breezy novel, only 150 pages. It’s so tightly written and yet so deep with subtext and I’m so very glad I read it. I hope you do too.
To those who read it, what did you think? And, wouldn’t this make a great film? Apparently, the Baldwin estate has a moratorium on adaptions after allowing “Beale Street” to be made into a film. I hope they let it be adapted because it must. Baldwin himself wrote a screenplay for it, but he never found a studio to buy it.
by BashfulJuggernaut