If Beale Street Could Talk cover art

If Beale Street Could Talk

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The inspiration for the film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins

Harlem in the 1970s: the black soul of New York City. Tish is nineteen and the man she loves - her lifelong friend and the father of her unborn child - has been jailed for a crime he did not commit. As their families come together to fight for his freedom, will their love be enough?

©1974 James Baldwin (P)2024 Penguin Audio African American Classics Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature New York

Critic reviews

'If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family.' (Joyce Carol Oates)

'Soulful... Racial injustice may flatten "the black experience" into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life - but black life, black love, is so much larger than that... It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes.' (Vanity Fair)

'Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing.' (Cornel West)
All stars
Most relevant
We don’t know if Fonny ever made it out free, they almost had the bail money. Frank gives up and dies, they have a beautiful love story. I suppose it was teased when Sharon said that they will be an ending, it might not be always happy but they’ll be an ending, the only certainty is that Tish will deliver the baby that was a beautiful outcome of their love story

We didn’t get a happy ending, in fact the ending was up in the air

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James Baldwin has such an amazing talent for ripping your heart out and putting it on a beautiful platter and painting the most stunning still life with it. He does the most beautiful and gut wrenchingly beautiful love stories that are so painfully realistic. Baldwin forces us to remember that love does not exist in a vacuum as much as we may wish that to be the case. In fact society and systemic oppression is the 3rd partner in all our relationships and it’s up to us to love beyond that obstacle….

Baldwin does it again

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