Showing results for "James Baldwin" in Genre Fiction

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.

James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction, Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni.

Told through the eyes of Tish, a 19-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and is imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions - affection, despair, and hope.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty.

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that inflames his nonfiction work.

Un grand roman sur le racisme, la violence, les combats pour les droits civiques, la place du Gospel, et l’amitié dans une langue crue, imagée et inoubliable.

Im Paris der Fünfziger lernt David den reizend überheblichen, löwenhaften Giovanni kennen. Die beiden beginnen eine Affäre - Verlangen und auch Scham brechen in David los wie ein Sturm. Als plötzlich seine Verlobte zurückkehrt, bringt David nicht den Mut auf, sich zu outen. Im Glauben, sich durch Verleugnung selbst retten zu können, stürzt er Giovanni in ein Unglück, das tödlich endet. Mit "Giovannis Zimmer" brach Baldwin gleich zwei Tabus: Als schwarzer Schriftsteller schrieb er über die Liebe zwischen zwei weißen Männern.

In the first passage James Baldwin reads with passion about the suicide of a young black man in despair. The second passage takes place at his funeral service, where Baldwin speaks with both anger and eloquence, in the voice of the minister attempting to comfort his friends and family.

En este gran clásico de la literatura norteamericana del siglo xx, James Baldwin da voz a Tish, una chica de diecinueve años embarazada de un joven escultor llamado Fonny. Novios desde el instituto, decidieroncasarse y formar una familia, pero sus planes se truncan cuando él es injustamente acusado de violación y encarcelado.

Warum hat Rufus Scott - ein begnadeter schwarzer Schlagzeuger aus Harlem - sich das Leben genommen? Wegen seiner Amour fou mit der weißen Leona, einer Liebe, die nicht sein durfte? Verzweifelt sucht Rufus' Schwester Ida nach einer Erklärung. Aber sie findet nur Wahrheiten, die neue Wunden schlagen - auch Wahrheiten über sich selbst. Wie ihr Bruder war Ida lange bereit, sich selbst zu verleugnen, um ihren Traum zu verwirklichen, den Traum, Sängerin zu werden. Wie ihr Bruder trägt sie eine Wut auf die Weißen in sich, die sie diskriminieren. Bis jetzt.

Ein einziger Tag kann deine Welt zum Einstürzen bringen, ein einziger Tag kann deine Rettung sein. John Grime ist ein schwarzer empfindsamer Junge aus Harlem, sexuell unschlüssig, seine einzige Waffe zur Selbstverteidigung ist sein kristallklarer Verstand. Aber was nützt es schon, von den weißen Lehrern geschätzt zu werden, wenn der eigene Vater einem tagtäglich predigt, man sei wertlos, solange man sich nicht von der Kirche retten lässt.

Harlem, Anfang der 70er-Jahre: Tish und Fonny sind ein Paar. Ihren zerrütteten Familien setzen sie trotzige Hoffnung entgegen. Tish ist schwanger, sie wollen heiraten und malen sich eine große Zukunft in der Beale Street aus. Doch dann wird Fonny der Vergewaltigung einer Puertoricanerin beschuldigt und inhaftiert. Tish und ihr Anwalt unternehmen alles Menschenmögliche, Fonnys Unschuld zu beweisen, bevor das Baby zur Welt kommt - gegen die Widerstände einer weißen Justiz. Der Fall spaltet die Nachbarschaft, führt aber auch zusammen, was einst zerrüttet war.

The cowboy in black, known as Deadeye, is being compelled by an inner pull in his chest, as if a rope was tied around his ribcage. This pull cannot be ignored. The unseen force drags him into dangerous and horrific situations. He learns to stay back in the shadows, away from the horrors he is forced to witness. He is not allowed to assist nor intervene in any way. He is after all, only the recorder.