Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

My mom bought this book for me, not so much because she knew who James Baldwin was, but rather because the title character and I share the same name. After leaving it on my shelf for years (stupid me!) I finally read it this summer.

I was surprised by the absence of black people in the novel. Mistakenly, I assumed that, since James Baldwin had the trifecta of being homosexual, black and poor, the novel would be about that. Instead, as it turns out, it was enough for the book to be about being homosexual and poor – leaving blackness aside – for it to be one of the most dramatic and poignant works I’ve ever read. 

As a reader, I ended up identifying both with the narrator and with the title character, despite the fact that, by the end of the novel, their positions are diametrically opposite. The narrator spends most of the novel trying to hide his identity and live a normal life, the title character tries to survive as best as he can, but without compromising with society.

The fact that the book ends in a way that is foreseeable since the first few pages (also because the author essentially spells it out) doesn’t make it any less disheartening. Quite the contrary…