It’s a message Baldwin’s black readers picked up from the beginning. Nestled in the manuscript, Baldwin’s fifth novel, were rebukes such as this one, perfectly suited for the holiday: “Who ever discovered America deserved to be dragged home, in chains, to die.” Acknowledging he sounded like the “witness as prophet,” Baldwin called Beale Street “the strangest novel” he had “ever written.” If Beale Street Could Talk may have been a story about the redemptive power of love, but it was written in the absolute conviction that “blood” was “on the wind” and that the powers that be were not long for this world. From his home-in-exile in France, James Baldwin wrote his brother David to announce that he had just completed his first novel in five years. The Book That Crowned Stephen King Is Now a Movie. The Trump-Era Fascination With the Politics of Rural America Just Won’t Die 50 Years Ago, the Woman Who Would Usher in the True-Crime Boom Befriended Her Co-Worker.
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