Notes From a Genius Man: A Review of Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
I love writing. I always have. But sometimes the thought of writing is scary — not because writing itself terrifies me, but because the possibility of failure does. “What if my writing sucks? What if no one cares?”, these are things I ask myself all the time while sitting on my computer and staring at a blank word doc. I almost always end up picking up a book or switching to the Netflix tab. And let me tell you, it’s stupid. Asking myself “what if?” too soon paralyzes me and stops me from even trying.
The inherent stupidity of this habit of mine became obvious after reading Giovanni’s Room, a book that I adored from the first page. Most people know this novel as James Baldwin’s boldest move — he wrote a book about a white, gay man while he himself was deemed a “negro writer” by the literary community, and was expected to write about the African-American experience. There are dozens of articles out there that outline the impact this novel had on queer Americans and how its publication shifted the idea everyone had of what black writers were supposed to write, so I want this review to focus on something else: how David’s story relates to anyone with a dream they’re too scared to follow.
Giovanni’s Room is a relatively short novel about an American man called David who goes to Paris while his girlfriend…
