Just Above My Head by James Baldwin

I have loved James Baldwin’s work since sophomore year of high school. From reading Go Tell it On the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room to watching his debate against William F. Buckley, all of his work resonated with me. Whether it be racism, sexism, or homophobia James Baldwin’s work collectively challenges and attacks structures that oppress the human being from living a fulfilled life. Though, I find that he is amongst the most brilliant artists of the twentieth century, I find his last novel, Just Above My Head to be the most poignant and comprehensive work of his career.

In the beginning of the novel, the protagonist Hall Montana receives a phone call and is told that his younger brother Arthur has just passed away.

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Arthur. Speak. Speak. Speak. I know, I know. I wasn’t always nice to you, I yelled when I shouldn’t have yelled, I was often absent when I should have been present, I know, I know; and sometimes you bored the shit out of me, and I heard your stories too often, and I knew all your fucking little ways, man, and how you jived the people– but that’s not really true, you didn’t really jive the people, you sang, you sang, and if there was any jiving done, the people jived you, my brother, because they didn’t know that they were the song and the price of the song and the glory of the song: you sang” (Baldwin 5).

This passage is an excerpt from the third page of the novel; it truly illuminates Baldwin’s earnest, poetic and poignant abilities as an artist. As the sentences repeat, fragment and run-off, the reader is immediately entrapped in the mental and emotional state of the protagonist. In grammatically representing the protagonist’s thought process this way,  the reader is guided through the emotional stages of grief that Hall experiences as he learns to deal with this indescribable loss.

As Hall recollects his childhood memories to mourn his brother, experiences from his past are re-examined and are collected to form a new perspective of his life, prompting the plot of the novel.

The novel is a brilliant construction because it is the height of Baldwin’s extraordinary ability to use nuanced, insular moments and memories from one’s past and to demonstrate how the collection of these small moments accumulate to construct the beautiful vast canvas of each individual life.

I recommend a thorough read of Just Above My Head to truly experience how Baldwin masterfully and effortlessly incorporates issues of racism, sexism and homophobia in his novels.  When you do get to those passages, you will be in awe of how terribly accurate he is at noting how societal structures inform and oppress the human being, and how it takes individual courage to escape these forms of entrapment. Moreover, you will be in awe at how Baldwin humanizes these experiences to reveal that death is not death, when one has loved in life. That love is everlasting and defeats the physical limitations of the human body.

–Justine Mekonen