The book stirred up a great deal of controversy when it was released. Now, by writing about his sexuality, the publisher feared that he would even further alienate his audience – both black and white.

As an African American writer, Baldwin was already rebelling against the racial prejudices of his time. Upon finishing the manuscript, Baldwin's publisher suggested that he might as well burn the book due to its focus on a romantic relationship between two men. Giovanni's Room was completed in 1956 and presented for publication. Baldwin dedicated Giovanni's Room to Lucien. The two became very close, but after several years, Lucien married a woman. He wrote several other works before Giovanni's Room, all of which dealt with the experience of being a black man in America before the Civil Rights Movement.ĭuring this time, Baldwin also had a love affair with a man named Lucien Happersberger, an experience upon which he must have drawn for Giovanni's Room. He found himself an apartment in the artist's district of Greenwich Village, NY and then, in 1948, in part due to the alienation he felt as a gay black man, he moved to Paris.īaldwin's literary reputation bloomed with his semi-autobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953. Yet as he grew older, he moved away from the influence of the church.

In his teens, he worked as a Pentecostal preacher, under the influence of his father. Urn:oclc:809707105 Republisher_date 20140426015429 Republisher_operator Scandate 20140423005708 Scanner Baldwin tended to write controversial novels, and Giovanni's Room was definitely controversial when it was published in 1956.īaldwin was born in Harlem, NY in 1924. Urn:lcp:giovannisroom00bald_0:epub:02a2bbeb-5a8b-4e1d-99ba-b259cd796307 Extramarc University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (PZ) Foldoutcount 0 Identifier giovannisroom00bald_0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1sf5cz91 Invoice 11 Isbn 9780385334587Ġ385334583 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL22729607M Openlibrary_edition Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 19:29:44 Boxid IA1117505 Boxid_2 CH122801 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, N.Y.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin