Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a short, masterful look at the mechanisms behind queer shame. Two lovers, David and Giovanni, hide in a darkened room in self-imposed exile in Paris until the narrator’s sense of shame breaks their love trance.

David, an American who is engaged to a woman, cannot bear to continue his gay affair and so leaves Giovanni, prompting a confrontation with a changed reality and a tragic reckoning with the guillotine. 

I love this book because line after line and paragraph after paragraph floor me.

"People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their deci­sions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not."

It lifts you with perfect prose and then hammers you with… show more.

This classic piece of literature, written by James Baldwin in 1964, twists the handle to the closed door of homosexuality in an attempt to bring life to the love story of two youthful men struggling with their true identity in the streets of Paris.

David and Giovanni discover each other in the dim bars of the nightlight surrounding the sector of the deprived. Baldwin’s words testify to the anguish of those denying their true selves, pushing them into lives of lies and secrecy.

In a heartfelt novel, Baldwin succeeds in showing the reader the hardships of homosexuality when the subject… show more.

Set in Paris, with David the sexually conflicted central character who has an affair with the doomed Giovanni.

This book – written in 1956 – is an incredibly brave exploration by Baldwin into Gay/Bi sexuality – breaking new ground in LGBTQ+ representation whilst at the same time creating an atmosphere of almost stereotypically gay angst – perhaps even initiating some of the cliches around gay life that were to become mainstream – and used by heterosexual society against us.

That doesn’t stop it being a novella of great significance and febrile passion – like a passionate quickie up against the… show more.

James Baldwin’s classic story of erotic doom and betrayal came to me far too late; it’s the sort of book you wish you’d read sooner and then plan to read again.

The novel articulates the real pain of unrequited erotic love—doomed erotic love—narrated by a person accused of not loving enough.

At the opening, we learn that Giovanni is to be executed, and the story unravels the desperate entanglement of two men in Paris in mid-century.

The love in this novel, while passionate, is never far from its opening sense of doom; love is mixed with hate and terror: “this… show more.

“I am the man, I suffered, I was there.” These lines from Walt Whitman announce that Baldwin’s eloquently written novel is probably the first by an already famous author announcing that he was gay, or at least bisexual. The only explicit sex in the novel is heterosexual. Including only straight sex in the story of an American expatriate in Paris and the waiter Giovanni reflects what could be published by a major publisher. It echoes one of the book’s main themes: denying your true feelings is a kind of living death, destructive of others as well as of yourself.

David is an expatriate American living in Paris as he wrestles with dislocation. David attempts to free himself of the shame of being a gay man in America in the 1950s by living very far away, in a city that feels more tolerant. The novel follows David as he laments his relationships with other men, especially an Italian bartender named Giovanni that he’s partial to. The city of Paris is seen as a new start in the old world, an accepting place where he can finally be himself. It explores issues of race, sexual orientation, and social class. Baldwin always… show more.

When I first picked up this book I was not expecting to be so deeply affected by it. Set in Paris in the 1950s, Giovanni’s Room follows David as he struggles with his own inner torments. He is caught between duty and desire when he meets Giovanni at a bar. With a fiancée in Spain and a father waiting back home in the States, David is forced to choose. Hella with her bold confidence and promise of normal, public life, or Giovanni and his many mysteries, passions, and suffocating love. My heart ached for David and Giovanni alike, their story… show more.

I was 20 and living in Missouri when I found this classic queer novel written in 1956. It was an early glimpse into deep longing, emotional connections, and dark inner conflicts that I had yet to fully explore as a young man. Baldwin’s insightful, moody, and lyrical novel set in Paris is at once romantic and painful tapping into sexual identity and masculinity struggles. Later, I found vintage photos of the author which revealed his fierce fashion flair (something we share!). 

If you are looking for fiction, this classic book is an incredibly well-written and compelling story about a bisexual man. Most of the book takes place in Paris, where wandering the gritty streets of the city of love the reader gets to explore the depths of the protagonist’s mind.

Actively challenging social taboos, Baldwin explores what it is like for two men to fall in love. Strong feelings of confusion within the protagonist come not just from his sexuality, but from being stuck between two cultures (American and French). Because of this the story arc itself cleverly plays with the… show more.