Seasonal Reads: If Beale Street Could Talk

Back at it again with another James Baldwin piece! This time, it’s the 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk. Beale Street is a gripping, timely meditation on the prison system’s effects on black folks in Harlem. Through a nonlinear, stream of consciousness style narration, Baldwin tells the tragic love story of the book’s two protagonists, Tish whose eyes we see through, and Fonny, who is imprisoned for the majority of the novel. This is a pretty, sad work of fiction that feels all too real given the United States’ current circumstances, so if discussions of this country’s justice system and its failures in regards to people of color rattle you, wait for the February Seasonal Read. It’ll be a love story with a happy ending, I promise. 

If Beale Street Could Talk, despite its sadness and the heaviness of the subject matter, is a quick read that packs a major punch. There is a tenderness to Baldwin’s writing when Fonny and Tish talk to each other, especially in flashbacks to their childhood interactions, which is important to note. They are happy. There are moments of elation and excited discovery and fun rebellion. One of the major moments of the novel is a triumph the couple experiences together, right before the walls crash in on them before Fonny’s arrest. I don’t think there are enough of these moments in the novel, and the Fonny-centered are significantly stronger than the book’s singularly female conversations. Tish’s narration seems to be guided by a strong male gaze which makes sense, of course, since her voice is literally managed by a man. 

In many of the scenes that Tish describes her mother and sister, there’s a lack of the intimacy present in recollection of her father or Fonny, and for this reason, I also think you should watch Barry Jenkins’ film adaption of the book, which is showing in theaters now. 

The film has been making its way through the awards circuit, in both independent film institutions like the Independent Spirit Awards, and more mainstream honors like early January’s Golden Globes, in which King won the award for Best Supporting Actress. Other notable performances in the film are given by newcomer Kiki Layne as Tish, Stephan James as Fonny, and FX Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry as Daniel. 

Jenkins is no stranger to text-to-film adaptations. His name may, and if it doesn’t should, sound familiar to you. He’s the director of Moonlight, which won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Picture, and was based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Jenkins’ attention to detail, story, the black form, and music comes through as vividly in Beale Street as it does in Moonlight. 

I attended an early screening of Jenkins’ version of If Beale Street Could Talk, which featured a Q&A featuring him and Regina King, who plays Tish’s mother. Jenkins discussed how he balanced the grief of the book, the depths that Tish experiences, with depictions of relief or happiness. I noticed few of such moments in while I read the book, but the film struck a different tone. Jenkins compared the process of making the film as “physics,” understanding forces at work, different effects of gravity on emotion or perception.  Many of the people who asked questions described feeling that hope wasn’t entirely lost in spite of the film’s bittersweet ending. According to Jenkins, the good outweighed the bad in the film because of alchemy--good is more dense than bad, it weighs more and stays with the soul. So while the film, like the book, is filled with instances of brutality, injustice, and despair, the moments of light Jenkins inserts (many not present or explicit in the film’s source material) make a big difference. 

One scene in particular that Jenkins adapts especially well is a moment between Fonny, and his friend Daniel. Henry’s performance as Daniel illuminates an unspoken horror about incarceration, about the injustice of a system made to imprison black people, and he does so in a hauntingly poignant way. This quality, the poignance, is something Baldwin’s writing conveys so beautifully.

There’s an obvious quality of care that was put into both the book and film. I hope you put aside some time to ingest them both over the next couple weeks.