How Fonny will receive the news, from behind the glass in a jailhouse, is always a point of suspense for me. It happens either in the moment when it is made clear that Fonny is in jail, or just two pages later, when the purpose of Tish's visit becomes clear: she's there to tell him she's expecting their child. Hers, inexplicably, is truncated to 'Tish.' And Alonzo Hunt, the 22-year-old love of her life, is called 'Fonny.' He's in jail, Tish soon reveals, before divulging where she is in the book's very first scene: 'I was sitting on a bench in front of a board, and he was sitting on a bench in front of a board and we were facing each other through a wall of glass between us.I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.'Įvery time I approach If Beale Street Could Talk with fresh eyes-and I've done so every two or three years for the last two decades-I realize I'm holding my breath somewhere in the reading of this first chapter. James Baldwin opens his fifth novel, 1974's If Beale Street Could Talk, with 19-year-old Clementine Rivers marveling over the arbitrary assignment of names.

Next, I think of names, how indelible some are-the names of the victims in the cases that generate the most public outcry-and how anonymous others are, the names that go un- or underreported, the ones that remain private lamentations rather than becoming hashtags or protest chants. If the victim lives, if he is severely bludgeoned or mauled, over-sentenced or falsely imprisoned, I think of a breath pattern permanently altered: breath held, to mimic death, in hopes that the beating or dog bites will end breath exhaled after an announcement that bail has been granted and isn't too astronomical or breath made ragged by the news that the assaulting officer won't be indicted or has been acquitted. Staccato, heart-pounding breaths, caught in a snare of panic, as though the breather senses she is nearing her last and wants to take in as much oxygen as she can in the space between, 'Step out of the vehicle!' or 'Hands where I can see them!' and the first blow or footfall or bullet. If the victim has died, I think of the dozen or so breaths before the end.

It's the first thing I ponder whenever a new police brutality case, officer-involved shooting of an unarmed victim, or wrongful incarceration is reported to the public.

James baldwin beale street