Another Country
Author: James Baldwin
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s
The book centers around Rufus Scott, a black jazz drummer in New York City during the 1950's, when jazz was slowly dying out. Rufus starts a relationship with Leona, a white woman, whom he becomes deeply enamored with; however, he also begins to abuse her as he cannot control his strong emotions. After she is eventually admitted to a mental hospital, Rufus commits suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The novel examines the relationships between Rufus's friends after his death.
Many literary scholars see Another Country as a criticism of Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro and how it impersonally portrayed black culture. Scholars also note the social significance of the many themes discussed in the novel, as they were things truly not discussed in daily life.
Author: James Baldwin
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s
The book centers around Rufus Scott, a black jazz drummer in New York City during the 1950's, when jazz was slowly dying out. Rufus starts a relationship with Leona, a white woman, whom he becomes deeply enamored with; however, he also begins to abuse her as he cannot control his strong emotions. After she is eventually admitted to a mental hospital, Rufus commits suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The novel examines the relationships between Rufus's friends after his death.
Many literary scholars see Another Country as a criticism of Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro and how it impersonally portrayed black culture. Scholars also note the social significance of the many themes discussed in the novel, as they were things truly not discussed in daily life.
Author: James Baldwin
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s
The book centers around Rufus Scott, a black jazz drummer in New York City during the 1950's, when jazz was slowly dying out. Rufus starts a relationship with Leona, a white woman, whom he becomes deeply enamored with; however, he also begins to abuse her as he cannot control his strong emotions. After she is eventually admitted to a mental hospital, Rufus commits suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The novel examines the relationships between Rufus's friends after his death.
Many literary scholars see Another Country as a criticism of Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro and how it impersonally portrayed black culture. Scholars also note the social significance of the many themes discussed in the novel, as they were things truly not discussed in daily life.
About the Author:
James Baldwin was born in 1924 and educated in New York. The author of over twenty works of fiction and non-fiction, Baldwin received numerous accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Grant. In 1986 he was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor. He died in 1987.
