Over fifty years after its publication, James Baldwin's masterpiece IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK rings true and remains relevant. It shines a piercing light on racial injustice, income inequality, cruelty and abuse of power that persist in present-day America, making it an ever important, albeit heartbreaking read.
Young African American Tish is pregnant with her boyfriend Fonny's child. He has falsely been incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit —simply because a white cop wanted revenge for being one-upped by a female shop owner who defended Fonny when the cop singled him out. Meanwhile, Fonny's father and Tish's family struggle to come up with enough cash to pay his lawyer and post his bail.
Told from Tish’s point of view with alternating flashbacks of her relationship with Fonny and the events that led to his arrest, this short, powerful novel concisely and eloquently conveys friendship, first love, family, and the despair, fear, and anger that come from being unjustly targeted and subjugated. Tish, Fonny, Tish’s sister, mother, father, and Fonny’s family are emotionally portrayed with skillfully drawn scenes and dialogue that packs a punch.
"That white man, baby...he want you to be worried about the money. That's his whole game. But if we got to where we are without money, we can get further. I ain't worried about they money—they ain't got no right to it anyhow, they stole it from us—they ain't never met nobody they didn't lie to and steal from."
"If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy. In that eye, you do not exist: if you are lucky. If that eye, from its height, has been forced to notice you, if you do exist in the unbelievably frozen winter which lives behind that eye, you are marked, marked, marked, like a man in a black overcoat, crawling, fleeing, across the snow...Presently the black overcoat will be still, turning red with blood, and the snow will be red, and the eye resents this, too, blinks once and causes more snow to fall, covering it all."
"To do much is to have the power to place these people where they are, and keep them where they are. These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned...But that, thinks Fonny, works both ways."