James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Two great books I'm enjoying right now:

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt


McCourt reads the audiobook version I have from the library, and I was immediately drawn into the Irish story-telling atmosphere he creates. The book is a memoir, but McCourt doesn't tell tell the whole story as if looking back. He writes with a child's voice when he talks about his childhood in Limerick. As he grows, so does the maturity of the narrative perspective.

I think my favorite kind of story is family drama, and this one ticks all the boxes, with hilarious anecdotes, rich characters colorfully drawn, and poignancy and universality evoked in every chapter.






If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

This book review by a blogging teacher I admire put this Baldwin title on my To-Read list. I finally picked it up this weekend and was drawn immediately into the same family drama portraits that draw me to Angela's Ashes.


Baldwin tells a story with such tenderness, even when the details are anything but glamorous. He paints the characters in such hues as to make the reader painfully aware of how obvious we are in all our insecurities.


Like McCourt, he is also dryly funny in his descriptions of characters. This is such a talent - describing people in all their ridiculousness without lapsing into criticism.


Here is one description of Mrs. Hunt, the mother of the main character's boyfriend:

Aside from the humor, there are wonderful descriptions of things we don't expect would show up on our faces, that do. Transformations in our features which reflect inner evolutions. I feel these evolutions happening all the time. Do the people close to me see those changes on my face, like this? (From "All of a sudden" to "beginning to see".

I have to fight the feeling that everything I read must be related to school and applicable to students. There is time for young adult lit, classroom texts, and personal stuff.