GIOVANNI’S ROOM
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GIOVANNI’S ROOM
In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, David, the protagonist, regards himself in the mirror, contemplating Giovanni, a captivating Italian man he meets in Paris. David is gay, and yet unable to accept his sexuality or the vulnerability of loving Giovanni. “I long to crack that mirror and be free,” he reflects. “[My body] is trapped in my mirror as it is trapped in time and it hurries towards revelation.”
In a 1987 interview on British television, Baldwin attested the point of Giovanni’s Room was to show “what happens to you if you can’t love anybody.” A person unable to relent to the pain and release of love was “dangerous”, Baldwin said: “You have no way of learning humility, no way of learning other people suffer.”
Love remained a preoccupation for Baldwin in his life and it was not limited to the realm of the romantic: the love of family was contentious because it was undeniable. “Love takes off the masks that we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,” Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time. Mirrors projected distorted reflections; one could only find stasis if they saw themselves through the eyes of the beloved.
In Another Country, Baldwin’s 1962 novel, Rufus, a Black artist from Harlem, falls in love with Leona, a white woman from the South fleeing an abusive marriage. But he cannot fulfill his love for her: the degradation he faces as a Black man causes him to punish Leona for the color of her skin. Vivaldo, Rufus’ best friend, loves Ida, the latter’s younger sister, who is only trying to survive: she cannot take Vivaldo, a white man, seriously.
It is only Eric, an actor with whom Rufus once shared his heart and body, who embraces the growth and challenge of love. The son of a wealthy banker in the South, Eric recalls his first lover, a Black boy in a place where it was forbidden to love, much less touch. Their union is a “healing transformation”, which compels Eric to abandon the small town and find freedom in Paris.
Baldwin finished writing Another Country in Istanbul in 1961 due to its unvarnished depictions of sex and interracial love. In America, he could not turn his back to write: the fight-and-flight impulse for self-preservation barred his quest for the truth. In Another Country, Baldwin freely explores the possibilities and magnitude of love, and its overflowing power to heal and transform. “[I]f love will not swing wide the gates,” Baldwin wrote of race relations in America. “No other power will or can.”
Written by Iman Sultan
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