Poems 1931-1940 by Langston Hughes

 

Source of book: I own the complete poems of Langston Hughes

 

This is book one of my official choices for Black History Month this year. (You can see the entire list on this page.) You can also read my post on Hughes’ earlier poems here. 

 

While there are plenty of similarities between the poems of the 1920s and the poems of the 1930s, there are definitely some differences. The 1930s were the Great Depression, the rise of unionism and the Communist party in the United States - both were a response to the plundering of the economy by the bankers and capitalists, the relentless lowering of wages, and the violent response to union activity. All of these find echos in the poems that Hughes wrote during this decade. He praises unionization - envisioning a time when workers benefited from their labor rather than the capitalists. He speaks extensively and favorably of Communism, which many did at that time. This was back when it was morally defensible to side with the Soviets. Stalin’s purges wouldn’t start until the middle of the decade, and wouldn’t really come to light to the West until after World War Two. In many ways, the Soviet Union seemed to be making progress in the world, and succeeding in much of what it attempted. Mao and Pol Pot were still in the future. Later, of course, things would become more complicated, to say the least. 

 

Also in this collection are plenty of poems about the hardships of the Great Depression, which, we easily forget, fell harder on minorities than on whites (as economic downturns still do today.) Also similar to our own time, FDR comes in for criticism for doing too little, and not being “strong” enough against the other party. 

 

Along with the more overtly political are a number of lyric works, blues poems, and truly inspiring visions of the future. Here are my favorites:

 

Tired

 

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren’t you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two –

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

 

Me too, Langston, me too. Hughes also has zero patience with those black folk who choose to sell out to racist whites and tickle their ears. (I can think of a few these days too…) 

 

To Certain Negro Leaders

 

Voices crying in the wilderness

At so much per word

From the white folks:

"Be meek and humble,

All you niggers,

And do not cry

Too loud.”

 

Hughes also distrusted the supposedly wise “elders.” This next poem reflects a lot of what I feel about the older generations these days - the ones who I would have loved to have been able to trust and ask for advice. But many of them chose and continue to choose their own wealth and comfort over the futures of their own grandkids. (From climate change on down…) They chose a system of half-truths and lies, evasion, and money. And power. And ultimately, they mostly enriched the ultrawealthy. 

 

Elderly Leaders

 

The old, the cautious, the over-wise—

Wisdom reduced to the personal equation:

Life is a system of half-truths and lies,

Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

Elderly,

Famous,

Very well paid,

They clutch at the egg

Their master's

Goose laid:

$$$$$

$$$$

$$$

$$

$

 

It is far too long to quote, but I will link to “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria,” a scathing indictment of the wealthy and their gall to build and advertise an ultra-luxurious playground for aristocrats while everyone else starved. (The Waldof Astoria opened in 1931.) In it, he notes that there are homeless outside its doors, people starving in the alleys behind, and, of course, black people weren’t allowed. 

 

Another fascinating long poem is “Good Morning Revolution,” one of the overtly communist poems. Particularly this stanza:

 

The boss's got all he needs, certainly,

Eats swell,

Owns a lotta houses,

Goes vacationin',

Breaks strikes,

Runs politics, bribes police,

Pays off congress,

And struts all over the earth — 

 

Another communist-inflected poem is this one. While I don’t entirely agree with the solution he proposes, he diagnoses the disease superbly. In fact, he saw the commoditization of religion long before the rest of us “apostates.” 

 

Goodbye Christ

 

Listen, Christ,

You did alright in your day, I reckon —

But that day's gone now.

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible —

But it's dead now,

The popes and the preachers've

Made too much money from it.

They've sold you to too many

 

Kings, generals, robbers, and killers —

Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,

Even to Rockefeller's Church,

Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.

You ain't no good no more.

They've pawned you

Till you've done wore out.

 

Goodbye,

Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,

Beat it on away from here now.

Make way for a new guy with no religion at all —

A real guy named

Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME —

 

I said, ME!

Go ahead on now,

You're getting in the way of things, Lord.

And please take Saint Ghandi with you when you go,

And Saint Pope Pius,

And Saint Aimee McPherson,

And big black Saint Becton

Of the Consecrated Dime.

And step on the gas, Christ!

Move!

 

Don't be so slow about movin'!

The world is mine from now on —

And nobody's gonna sell ME

To a king, or a general,

Or a millionaire. 

 

It’s so incredibly frustrating to understand that Christianity has become so perverted that kings, generals, and millionaires think God is on their side. He has been sold to the worst of humanity, debased beyond recognition. 

 

This next poem was intended to be performed, not read. Unfortunately, I cannot find a video of a group doing it. Which would have been awesome. Anyway, here it is:

 

       

Chant for May Day    

           

To be read by a Worker with, for background, the rhythmic waves of rising and re-rising Mass Voices, multiplying like the roar of the sea.

 

WORKER: The first of May;

When the flowers break through the earth,

When the sap rises in the trees,

When the birds come back from the South.

Workers:

Be like the flowers,

10 VOICES: Bloom in the strength of your unknown power,

20 VOICES: Grow out of the passive earth,

40 VOICES: Grow strong with UNION,

All hands together—

To beautify this hour, this spring,

And all the springs to come

50 VOICES: Forever for the workers!

WORKER: Workers!

10 VOICES: Be like the sap, rising in the trees,

20 VOICES: Strengthening each branch,

40 VOICES: No part neglected—

50 VOICES: Reaching all the world.

WORKER: All workers:

10 VOICES: White workers,

10 OTHERS: Black workers,

10 OTHERS: Yellow workers,

10 OTHERS: Workers in the islands of the sea—

50 VOICES: Life is everywhere for you,

WORKER: When the sap of your own strength rises

50 VOICES Life is everywhere.

10 VOICES: May Day!

20 VOICES: May Day!

40 VOICES: May Day!

50 VOICES: When the earth is new.

WORKER: Proletarians of the world:

20 VOICES: Arise,

40 VOICES: Grow strong,

60 VOICES: Take Power,

80 VOICES: Till the forces of the earth are yours

100 VOICES: From this hour.

 

Hughes also saw through American Imperialism - and the myth that we are somehow an exceptionally moral nation. (We aren’t.) 

 

Columbia

 

Columbia,

My dear girl,

You really haven't been a virgin for so long

It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext.

You're terribly involved in world assignations

And everybody knows it.

You've slept with all the big powers

In military uniforms,

And you've taken the sweet life

Of all the little brown fellows

In loin cloths and cotton trousers.

When they've resisted,

You've yelled, " Rape, "

At the top of your voice

And called for the middies

To beat them up for not being gentlemen

And liking your crooked painted mouth.

(You must think the moons of Hawaii

Disguise your ugliness.)

Really,

You're getting a little too old,

Columbia,

To be so naive, and so coy.

Being one of the world's big vampires,

Why don't you come on out and say so

Like Japan, and England, and France,

And all the other nymphomaniacs of power

Who've long since dropped their

Smoke-screens of innocence

To sit frankly on a bed of bombs?

 

O, sweet mouth of India ,

And Africa ,

Manchuria, and Haiti .

 

Columbia,

You darling,

Don't shoot!

I'll kiss you!

 

Hughes sees the eventual redemption of America in the lives of its downtrodden. And, as many of his poems attest, he understood that the wellbeing of our nation is inextricably tied up with the wellbeing of our non-white citizens. There are a number of poems on this them. I rather liked this one:

 

Black Dancers

 

We

Who have nothing to lose

Must sing and dance

Before the riches

Of the world

Overcome

Us.

 

We

Who have nothing to lose

Must laugh and dance

Lest our laughter

Goes from

Us.

 

And this one, which references a beautiful place in my beloved California:

 

Moonlight Night: Carmel

 

Tonight the waves march

In long ranks

Cutting the darkness

With their silver shanks,

Cutting the darkness

And kissing the moon

And beating the land's

Edge into a swoon.

 

That’s a truly beautiful word picture. I love it more every time I read it. 

 

I would be truly remiss if I didn’t include a blues lyric. It is a shame that there isn’t (as far as I can tell) a blues group just setting Langston Hughes to a 12 bar beat. I mean, really. This one was co-written with Richard Wright. 

 

Red Clay Blues

 

I miss that red clay, Lawd, I

Need to feel it in my shoes.

Says miss that red clay, Lawd, I

Need to feel it in my shoes.

I want to get to Georgia cause I

Got them red clay blues.

 

Pavement's hard on my feet, I'm

Tired o' this concrete street.

Pavement's hard on my feet, I'm

Tired o' this city street.

Goin' back to Georgia where

That red clay can't be beat.

 

I want to tramp in the red mud, Lawd, and

Feel the red clay round my toes.

I want to wade in that red mud,

Feel that red clay suckin' at my toes.

I want my little farm back and I

Don't care where that landlord goes.

 

I want to be in Georgia, when the

Big storm starts to blow.

Yes, I want to be in Georgia when that

Big storm starts to blow.

I want to see the landlords runnin' cause I

Wonder where they gonna go!

 

I got them red clay blues.

 

I can’t omit this one either. The WPA seems perfect for a blues song. For this one, you can actually listen to Langston Hughes read his own poem. 

 

Out of Work

 

I walked de streets till

De shoes wore off my feet.

I done walked de streets till

De shoes wore off my feet.

Been lookin' for a job

So's that I could eat.

 

I couldn't find no job

So I went to de WPA.

Couldn't find no job

So I went to de WPA.

WPA man told me:

You got to live here a year and a day.

 

A year and a day, Lawd,

In this great big lonesome town!

A year and a day in this

Great big lonesome town!

I might starve for a year but

That extra day would get me down.

 

Did you ever try livin'

On two-bits minus two?

I say did you ever try livin'

On two-bits minus two?

Why don't you try it, folks,

And see what it would do to you?

 

Speaking of songs, one of the poems in this collection is “In Time of Silver Rain,” which was (along with other Hughes poems) set to music by African-American composer Robert Owens. We performed the string orchestra and tenor version a few years ago - great stuff. Enjoy this lovely version by Xavier Durden. 

 

 

I want to end with two poems that contrast well. The first is about war - Hughes loathed war and wrote many anti-war poems. It resonates with me, not just because of the senseless (and unsuccessful) wars that have raged my entire lifetime, but also in connection with the Culture Wars™. My generation of Evangelicals was expected to serve in the conflict. In essence, to sacrifice ourselves to fight a war that our parents’ generation believed in. A war supposedly about truth, but, in the end, revealed to be a “bundle of vicious lies” - a racist, misogynist, homophobic bundle of lies. 

 

Comment on War

 

Let us kill off youth

For the sake of truth .

 

We who are old know what truth is —

Truth is a bundle of vicious lies

Tied together and sterilized —

A war-makers' bait for unwise youth

To kill off each other

For the sake of

Truth.

 

That also ties back in with the supposed “wisdom” of the elders. And the supposed “superiority” of the past. In contrast, the second poem is my all-time favorite Hughes poem, and one I have posted for the last two presidential inaugurations. It is a far more truthful look at the past, at the present, and an inspiring vision for the future. It is, in every possible way, the Anti-MAGA. 

 

Let America Be America Again

 

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

 

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

 Source of book: I own this.

 

I originally selected Giovanni’s Room as one of my Black History Month selections. Having read it, though, I’m not sure entirely whether it fits in that category. To be sure, James Baldwin was black, and indeed one of the best authors I have discovered reading Black History. However, Giovanni’s Room is not what I expected, and not really like anything else of Baldwin’s I have read. Go Tell It On The Mountain, his first, largely autobiographical novel, was quite good, if difficult to read because of its depictions of domestic violence. (His family was messed up, to be sure.) Notes of a Native Son, his first collection of essays, is thoughtful and thought provoking. Baldwin was brilliant and his writing gave me new perspectives on a number of things. In both of these books, race is at the center. Blackness is a central theme. Both are intensely personal to Baldwin, of course.

 

 

 Giovanni’s Room is also personal to Baldwin, for a somewhat different reason. But what was most unusual about the book (compared to the others) is the fact that all the characters are white. All of them. And the closest the book comes to talking about race per se is the precarious position in society that the titular Italian immigrant has. Instead, the book is about sexuality - sex and love and power and masculinity. 

 

James Baldwin was gay, a fact that made him a bit of a pariah with certain other elements of the Civil Rights Movement. Joseph McCarthy had lumped LGBTQ people in with Communists - intentionally - at the same time that a pseudo-scientific theories made non-cishet existence into a pathology. Thus, Baldwin’s sexuality was, at best, considered a distraction and a millstone on the movement. 

 

In his 20s, Baldwin emigrated to France, where he spent most of the rest of his life. Thus, much of his work, while it made an impact in the United States (and has grown in reputation since his death), was actually written as an outsider, an ex-pat (a term only white people get to use without challenge…others are “immigrants.”) Giovanni’s Room is set in the Paris of the post-war period. David, the narrator, is the American son born into some wealth which his father sparingly doles out to him. The book starts with some mysterious references to Giovanni, who is about to be executed for an unstated crime (we later find out it is murder), before David flashes back to tell the rest of the story. 

 

David is engaged to be married to another glamorous white American, Hella, who has gotten cold feet and gone on an extended tour of Spain without him. (Now, we would say she went to “find herself.”) David is a closeted bisexual - or perhaps just straight-up gay? - and is involved in the gay nightlife scene in Paris. That scene, with its bars and its code words and subculture, is technically legal in Paris, unlike in the United States of the time, but it is still seen as unsavory and unmentionable. To help pay his bills, David is attached to Jacques, a disgusting old “fairy” as David calls him - he preys on beautiful young men, using his money and influence to control them. Going to a gay bar with Jacques, he meets Giovanni, a new bartender, recently arrived from Italy. (As we find out later, Giovanni got his fiancee pregnant, but the child was stillborn, so he is fleeing his past - and perhaps his sexuality.) Giovanni falls hard for David - who is likewise attracted - and the two of them leave Jacques behind to move in together in “Giovanni’s room” - a tiny, filthy servant room in what used to be a grand house. Later, when Hella returns, now ready to marry David, he throws Giovanni over for Hella. However, he is consumed with guilt and longing - and self-loathing because he considers his homosexual affairs to be “unmanly.” Hella suspects something is wrong. When he leaves her early one morning, she tails him and finds him in the arms of a sailor, leading to a heartwrenching breakup. In the meantime, Giovanni loses his job, ends up with Jacques, then is cast aside like the disposable boy toy Jacques considers everyone, and spirals downward. He tries to get his old job back, but that goes badly, ending with Giovanni killing his former employer. (David speculates as to how it went down, but we do not know for sure.) 

 

The somewhat lurid plot notwithstanding, the book is most powerful in its examination of what happens in David’s head (and to a lesser degree, in Giovanni’s.) All tied up together in this book are social alienation, sexuality, masculinity, and LGBTQ interactions with mainstream society. Both David and Giovanni are outsiders - as immigrants and also as gay/bisexual men. Giovanni seems to have embraced his orientation far more than David, who is not just publicly closeted, but also in his own mind. He cannot reconcile his sexuality with his concept of “masculinity,” which is - as it usually is in our society - tied up with being “not feminine” and “not taking on the role of a woman.” And, it should also be said, with “being a conquering man of a beautiful woman.” In the end, the gay subculture is all Giovanni has, while David endeavours to code switch back to heterosexuality. Which, obviously, doesn’t go well for him either. In the end, David seems incapable of actually loving anyone, even himself. 

 

Baldwin is such a moving writer in this book. His descriptive power takes you on a journey both through gay Paris and through a tortured and damaged psyche. As good as the other books I have read of his were, I was particularly enthralled by his craft in this book. Giovanni’s Room is his second novel, and he seems to have really found his voice in it. Here are some of the ones I loved the most. Early in the book, David is looking back on what went wrong between him and Hella - even the first time, when she left for Spain. 

 

And the very last night she was here, the very last time I saw her, as she was packing her bag, I told her that I had love her once and I made myself believe it. But I wonder if I had. I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence which will never come again which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And those nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no-one to watch, no penalties attached - it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. 

 

I was thinking, when I told Hella that I loved her, of those days before anything awful, irrevocable, had happened to me, when an affair was nothing more than an affair. Now, from this night, this coming morning, no matter how many beds I find myself in between now and my final bed, I shall never be able to have any more of those boyish, zestful affairs - which are, really, when one thinks of it, a kind of higher, or anyway, more pretentious masturbation. 

 

Flashing back even further, having told of his first same-sex encounters as a teen, David talks about the drunk-driving accident that nearly kills him, and his father’s inability to handle emotions. They both agree he should go to Europe for a while, and see if things can straighten themselves out. 

 

Once I was out of the house, of course, it became much easier to deal with him and he never had any reason to feel shut out of my life for I was always able, when talking about it, to tell him what he wished to hear. And we got on quite well, really, for the vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in which I myself most desperately needed to believe.

For I am - or I was - one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all - a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named - but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. 

 

It is this need to avoid facing his sexuality that keeps him from facing reality. Instead, he develops a habit of hurting those who he is attracted to - because they bring up his uncomfortable feeling of being unmanned. His first description of Jacques is more charitable than it becomes later in the book, and he gives a hint as to why he loathes Jacques deep down. 

 

Jacques is not too bad. Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both. In some ways I liked him. He was silly but he was so lonely; anyway, I understand now that the contempt I felt for him involved my self-contempt.

 

Once he is firmly involved with Giovanni, David expresses his fear that Hella will find out. Giovanni is puzzled, considering David had gotten it on with men while he was with Hella. 

 

‘It’s just that she’ll be terribly hurt if she does find out, that’s all. People have very dirty words for - for this situation.’ I stopped. His face suggested that my reasoning was flimsy. I added, defensively, ‘Besides, it is a crime - in my country and, after all, I didn’t grow up here, I grew up there.’

‘If dirty words frighten you,’ said Giovanni, ‘I really do not know how you have managed to live so long. People are full of dirty words. The only time they do not use them, most people I mean, is when they are describing something dirty.’

 

That line was worth a snort. Every bit as perceptive is a passage on American tourists, with their cookie-cutter clothes and seeming disconnection from pleasure or embodiment. And then, there is this line:

 

Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudeness, was power and sorry, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

 

That seems to ring true about the hollowness of White American culture, in so many ways. 

 

In the middle of the story, feeling insecure about his masculinity, David has a one-night stand with Sue, in what has to be one of the most horrid sex scenes in literature. Baldwin’s writing is just phenomenal here - he captures so much of David’s desperate need to prove he isn’t gay, to regain his former equilibrium before Hella returns, and the loathing he feels for himself and poor Sue as he uses her. Sue has her own baggage, knowing David does not love her, and mired in hopeful despair about finding the man who does. Here are some bits. 

 

I felt a hardness and a constriction in her, a grave distrust, created already by too many men like me, ever to be conquered now. What we were about to do would not be pretty. 

 

I took off my shoes and lay back on her sofa. I tried not to think. But I was thinking that what I did with Giovanni could not possibly be more immoral than what I was about to do with Sue.

 

It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come. 

 

It gets worse as it goes on. It is sex that should never have happened, sex that hurts both of them, and the kind I hope never to have.  

 

Later, after Giovanni loses his job - without it, he has no right to stay in France - dang undocumented immigrants, right? - he and David try (and fail) to face the coming breakup. There is a line about home here that was achingly sad. 

 

He smiled, ‘Why, you will go hime and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.’ 

 

Once Hella returns, and the cowardly David ghosts Giovanni, they run into each other by accident. Just before this, David and Hella have an interesting conversation about gender. 

 

‘I don’t see what’s so hard about being a woman. At least, not as long as she’s got a man.’

‘That’s just it,’ said she. ‘Hasn’t it ever struck you that that’s a sort of humiliating necessity?...it does seem - well, difficult - to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven stranger before you can begin to be yourself.’

 

The end of the book contains two excruciating breakup scenes. The first is between David and Giovanni. 

 

‘She’s not a little girl,’ I said. ‘She’s a woman and no matter what you think, I do love her…’

‘You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will!’

 

And then, after Hella discovers his secret, she (more calm than Giovanni, for what it is worth - dang emotional females, right?) quietly tears what is left of his life apart. 

 

‘If I stay here much longer,’ she said, later that same morning, as she packed her bag, ‘I’ll forget what it’s like to be a woman.’

She was extremely cold, she was very bitterly handsome.

‘I’m not sure any woman can forget that,’ I said.

‘There are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn’t simply mean humiliation, doesn’t simply mean bitterness. I haven’t forgotten it yet,’ she added, ‘in spite of you. I’m not going to forget it.’

 

‘But I knew.’ she said. ‘I knew. This is what makes me so ashamed. I knew it every time you looked at me. I knew it every time we went to bed. If only you had told me the truth then. Don’t you see how unjust it was to wait for me to find it out? To put all the burden on me? I had the right to expect to hear from you - women are always waiting for the man to speak. Or hadn’t you heard?’

 

David makes the excuse that he didn’t even know it himself. Which, maybe. But probably not. I have no idea exactly where Baldwin drew from for this book - was he David? Was he Giovanni? Or was this just a brilliant psychological study? Because it is that. 

 

There are some fascinating literary parallels here too. While I haven’t read much in the way of the “passing” novel (where a black character passes as white) other than Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain, there do seem to be some connections. Just as David has the burden - and ability - to “pass” as straight, he also has the fear of being “outed.” In both the racial and sexual sense, the consequences could be deadly. I was also reminded a great deal of - believe it or not - Henry James, the great master of the “Americans in Europe” ex-pat novel. Like James - who was also queer - Baldwin used the clash of cultures to illuminate the psychology of his characters. And the endings in both cases are catastrophic both in the exterior and interior worlds. 

 

While Giovanni’s Room was different than I expected from Baldwin, it was a rewarding book, and went places that seem shocking now, let alone in the 1950s.