If Beale Street Could Talk

1974 novel by James Baldwin
the film adaptation

If Beale Street Could Talk is a 1974 novel by American writer James Baldwin. His fifth novel (and 13th book overall), it is a love story set in Harlem in the early 1970s. The title is a reference to the 1916 W. C. Handy blues song "Beale Street Blues", named after Beale Street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee. It was adapted as a film of the same name, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, and released in theaters on December 14, 2018. It garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Regina King.

The book follows a relationship between a 19 year old girl named Tish, whose given name is Clementine Rivers, and a 22 year old sculptor named Fonny, whose given name is Alonzo Hunt. They grew up in the same neighborhood in New York City and are childhood friends. They fall in love and become engaged. The novel takes place after Fonny has been falsely accused of raping a woman, and arrested and jailed awaiting his trial. Tish learns that she is pregnant after Fonny is incarcerated and must rely on her and Fonny's family for support. The failures of the criminal justice system keep Fonny incarcerated. Beale Street is the first Baldwin novel to focus exclusively on a Black love story; it is also the only novel in his corpus narrated by a woman. Published at the tail end of the Black Arts Movement, it explores love within Black life, centering on the emotional bonds holding two African American families together.

Reviewing the novel in The New York Times in 1974, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates described the book as "a moving, painful story" but "ultimately optimistic. It stresses the communal bond between members of an oppressed minority, especially between members of a family," offering
"a quite moving and very traditional celebration of love. It affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction that between members of a family, which may involve extremes of sacrifice." In 2015, Stacia L. Brown, writing in Gawker, similarly found Beale Street "belong[ed] to a collection of literature that seeks to humanize black men, through their relationships with parents, lovers, siblings, and children. It swan dives from optimism to bleakness and rises from the ash of dashed hopes."

Barry Jenkins wrote and directed the film adaptation of the novel, starring KiKi Layne as Tish and Stephan James as Fonny, with Regina King (who won an Academy Award for her role). The adaptation was produced by Plan B Entertainment, and was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2018. Annapurna Pictures released the film on December 14, 2018.