A review by jasmineteagirl
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

fast-paced

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Giovanni’s Room is hailed as a queer classic; an account of a queer fictional relationship that is tragic and written with such vulnerability, it must be admired. I understand why this book is held with such revere. James Baldwin’s writing is simply incredible. And to write and publish such a book in the 1950’s is a brave feat. 

Through David, our narrator’s perspective, we see a young man grapple with sexual identity. He is fearful of his desires, used to weaving throughout life in the comfortably or “normalcy” of heterosexuality. Enter Giovanni, an Italian bartender, whom David soon enters a romantic relationship and roommate situation (Giovanni’s Room). The relationship is one David sees as fleeting, but Giovanni sees as love, despite knowing Hella, David’s fiance, is to arrive. This creates volatile tension, and David is quite a self-destructive character. In a way, he’s dragging Giovanni along. Lusting for men is something David very obviously struggles with, and Baldwin’s writing of these struggles is nothing short of amazing. Every word feels honest, vulnerable, and poetic. I can’t praise enough about Baldwin’s writing of such matters, especially given the time he lived and wrote this. Much of what we read involving LGBTQ+ in the book feels reflective of real world views from the 1950s. 

On another note, I found interesting the talks of gender. With misogyny in books, I find myself wary. However, in this book, you can tell the misogyny is out of struggles with heteronormativity and views many men, and people, held about women. As someone intrigued by talks of feminism, Hella’s character coming into the story was very interesting. She is a woman who came to realize women’s true role in a patriarchal society, and reckons with how she had to conform to it. And also that she desires to do so for her love, she wants to have a man to move on in society. 

Aside from discussions of sexuality and gender, a page of this book delves into the American experience abroad in Europe. And from personal experience, James Baldwin nailed it. Not only the experience abroad but just the experience in general, living in a country where you’re from there, but not really FROM there: “I was aware that they all had in common something that made them Americans but I could never put my finger on what it was. I knew that whatever this common quality was, I shared it.” and, “And I resented this: resented being called an American (and resented resenting it) because it seemed to make me nothing more than that, whatever that was; and I resented being called not an American because it seemed to make me nothing.”