Who never dreamt about being in Paris? Live the European lifestyle, use fancy clothes, smoke a few cigarettes, fall in love, and kiss under the Eiffel Tower lights. We’ve always seen this romanticized and dream-like Paris in all types of media, but not in Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
James Baldwin is a playwright, poet, essayist, activist for the American civil rights movement, and novelist. Baldwin has always been connected with writing, and during his teenage years, he wrote plays, short stories, and poems for his high school magazine. Between all kinds of jobs, in 1945, he finally started publishing in periodicals such as The National and Partisan Review.
The multitalented artist has a vast catalog that goes from Go Tell It To The Mountain, his first romance, which is deeply influenced by his own experiences growing up in a religious family in Harlem, to Notes of a Native Son, his first non-fiction piece. In this collection of essays, he discusses blackness throughout America and abroad, establishing himself not only as a celebrated critic writer but also as an important voice in the civil rights movement. However, it’s Giovanni’s Room, the most recent TikTok hit and one of his most polemic works, that we’ll be talking about today.
Giovanni’s Room release (1956)
Since its release, in 1956, Giovanni’s Room has been involved in a few controversies, the publishing house didn’t understand why James would write such a different plot line from his early work, which focused primarily on the life of a black family living in Harlem, New York. His second novel brought a whole distinct concept from what people expected from the writer, however, it is still a topic that is very intimate to Baldwin: sexuality.
What is the book about?
Underneath all the cigarette smoke and the smell of love in the air, Giovanni’s Room tells a story about a Bohemian France during the 60s. I’m sure you’ve heard this premise before, but not in the compelling storytelling à la James Baldwin.Â
David is an American passing through Paris, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, who’s in Spain deciding if marrying him is a good idea. While staying there, he decides to go to a bar where he meets Giovanni, a fascinating Italian waiter. Their stories cross the instant they first exchange a glance, from that minute to what happens next in the waiter’s room, David’s life is changed forever. He is now in love with a man.
Giovanni’s Room, it’s a bold narrative that explores the particulars of a gay relationship during the 20th century. Baldwin challenges the critic and the public in a period of time when stories about the LGBT+ community weren’t accepted. He portrays the life and the ambiguity of a part of society that was neglected and purposefully forgotten by the State and the media.
With a tension that builds from beginning to end, the author dissects issues like masculinity and self-acceptance in a reality that denies the existence of homosexual people. James mixes the characteristics of a romance with suspense, but never revokes his social critical side. That’s why more than anyone is capable of unveiling the fears of such complex characters like David and Giovanni in what seems like an ordinary conversation.
Nothing in Giovanni’s Room is unintentional. Everything James Baldwin writes has a meaning, a second thought, an intrinsic purpose. He plays around with the roles: first, David plays the boyfriend, he is the masculine figure; later on in the novel, when his relationship with Giovanni advances, he is pictured as the housewife. The resemblance hurts intensely the American, who despises any affinity to the feminine form. Baldwin shows his brilliance by building these opposites within the same character and, at the same time, exposing the sexism that, unfortunately, comes so naturally to men due to the necessity of always being the more masculine in the eyes of society.
James Baldwin proves once again he is a specialist when it comes to writing literary classics, and TikTok gets it right by making it become a trending book, introducing this piece of art to younger generations. Giovanni’s Room is a touching, timeless, and life-changing narrative that discusses, above all things, self-acceptance besides what society tells us through the eyes of a well-written homosexual relationship. Run to your local bookstore and start reading it now!
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The article above was edited by Marina Ponchio.Â
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