5/24/2023 0 Comments Beale street james baldwin![]() I was 16, white, middle class, and had spent exactly one night of my life in New York, at a Holiday Inn. The same summer that Beale Street was published, I read it far from New York, in a quiet, leafy suburb of what was called in those days “the New South,” and the news that book brought me might as well have come from another planet. ![]() ![]() ![]() “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride,” is a saying you hear among lawyers of the criminal defense bar, and the ordeal that Tish, Fonny, and their families endure is a very harsh ride indeed. The perpetrator of the arrest-of the entire maddening injustice of Fonny’s incarceration-is one Officer Bell, a blue-eyed, red-haired New York City cop who, for no good reason, has it in for Fonny.īeale Street is a tragedy, not without hope at the end, but a tragedy nevertheless. It tells the story of Tish and Fonny, two very young (she’s 19, he’s 22) African-Americans in New York City who are in love, engaged to be married, then find the fragile trajectory of their lives thrown off by Fonny’s arrest for a rape he did not commit. ![]() The novel of the same name by James Baldwin and on which the movie is based was published in June 1974. If Beale Street Could Talk, a movie directed by Barry Jenkins, opens in limited release December 14. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |