If Beale Street Could Talk.

BALDWIN, James.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 145468

New York: The Dial Press, 1974.

Signed limited first edition, one of 250 numbered copies of Baldwin’s fifth novel, a love story set in Harlem in the early 1970s. Octavo, original boards. One of two hundred and fifty copies boldly signed by James Baldwin on the colophon, this is number 212. In near fine condition.

Reviewing the novel in The New York Times in 1974, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates described the book as "a moving, painful story" but "ultimately optimistic. It stresses the communal bond between members of an oppressed minority, especially between members of a family," offering "a quite moving and very traditional celebration of love. It 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, which may involve extremes of sacrifice." Basis for the film directed by Barry Jenkins, starring Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, Pedro Pascal, Ed Skrein, Brian Tyree Henry and Regina King.