Just Above My Head - Hardcover

Baldwin, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803747772 ISBN 13: 9780803747777

Publisher: Dial Press, 1979

Synopsis

James Baldwin first wrote about homosexuality in his famous early novel, "Giovanni's Room". Here, he brings homosexuality and race together in the story of the great gospel singer Arthur Montana. Arthur was found dead in the basement of a London pub at the age of thirty-nine, yet he lies on in this memoir. Written by Hall, his brother and manager, it is in part a subtle and moving study of the treacherous ebb and flow of memory. Set against a vividly drawn background of the civil rights movement of the sixties, "Just Above My Head" explores how Arthur discovers his love for Jimmy - 'with his smile like a lantern and a voice like Saturday nights' - and portrays how profoundly racial politics can shape the private business of love.

About this title

From the Publisher

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 a 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 enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land.

"A work of passion... Glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, movements of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks--scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding."--The New York Times Book Review.

"His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in in late-twentieth century America."

From the Back Cover

"If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one."
--Michael Ondaatje

"The work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers... glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, moments of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks--scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A fine novel...it seems impossible for [Baldwin] to write with anything other than eloquence. His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in late-twentieth-century America."
--The New Yorker

Edition details

• Publisher: Dial Press
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0803747772
• ISBN 13: 9780803747777
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 597