James Baldwin 
If Beale Street Could Talk 

The inspiration for the film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins
»Achingly beautiful» Guardian
Harlem in the 1970s: the black soul of New York City. Tish is nineteen and the man she loves — her lifelong friend and the father of her unborn child — has been jailed for a crime he did not commit. As their families come together to fight for his freedom, will their love be enough?
»Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten ‘the black experience’ into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life — but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It»s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin»s work that blackness contains multitudes» Vanity Fair
»If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction — that between members of a family» Joyce Carol Oates