Just Above My Head

Just Above My Head

First edition
Author James Baldwin
Country United States
Language English
Publisher Dial Press
Publication date
1979
Pages 597
ISBN 0-8037-4777-2

Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth novel, first published in 1979.

Plot introduction

The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing 'incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York City, Paris.'[1]

Characters

Major themes

The novel enmeshes racism with homophobia, with an 'explicit association of Birmingham and Sodom.'[2][3]

Allusions to other works

Allusions to actual history

Literary significance and criticism

It has been suggested that the novel links the trope of the internalisation of history to what W. E. B. Du Bois defined as the African American's 'longing to attain self-conscious manhood.'[4]

It has been suggested that Crunch subscribes to the idea propounded by Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Cesare Lombroso that homosexuality was inscribed upon a homosexual's flesh,[5] when he wonders, "if his change was visible".[6]

References

  1. New York Times, Just Above My Head by John Romano, September 23, 1979
  2. James Baldwin, Just Above My Head, New York: Dell Publishing, 1984, page 183
  3. Lee Edelman, Homographesis: essays in gay literary and cultural theory, Routledge, New York & London, 1994, page 67
  4. Lee Edelman, Homographesis: essays in gay literary and cultural theory, Routledge, New York & London, 1994, page 62
  5. Lee Edelman, Homographesis: essays in gay literary and cultural theory, Routledge, New York & London, 1994, page 5 and 69
  6. James Baldwin, Just Above My Head, New York: Dell Publishing, 1984, page 226
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