"I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care." 
 So, ,,Giovanni's Room" was my first read in February which I read to celebrate Black History Month and I was really happy to learn that Baldwin's second novel doesn't deal with ,,black struggle" but with homosexuality and what it means to be a man instead. Don't get me wrong, I think it's very important to have own voices books about ,,black struggle" but if you look at the books that black authors were allowed to publish throughout history most of them were only valid because they were about ,,black struggle" and I wanted to support an author who was lucky enough to write about something else. I know that James Baldwin's other works, especially his nonfiction, are extremely political and I am eager to check these out in the future but I appreciate that he was brave enough to put his experiences of what it means to be gay out there instead of exclusively writing about what it means to be a black man in America. 
 I watched a long discussion about this novel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpME...) which talked about this exact fact and that ,,Giovanni's Room" was not well received in the black community because it didn't deal with racism, all of the characters in ,,Giovanni's Room" are white and being gay was still a taboo topic, especially in black communities. 
 James Baldwin was born during the ,,Harlem Renaissance" as the first of nine children. Early in his life he joined the church to escape from the abuse of his step-dad and began preaching for 3 years, this narrative style of prayer shines through his works as well. After the suicide of a friend Baldwin, who had just experienced first-hand that as a gay black man he had no place in America, left Harlem with next to no money and went abroad to Paris - the city which is the setting of ,,Giovanni's Room". 
 Baldwin couldn't speak French but used his time in Paris to start writing. In order to think and reflect on his 'Heimat' (this wonderful German word means 'the place where you feel at home'), he needed to have some distance. The main protagonist of ,,Giovanni's Room" is experiencing something similar. And just like David, Baldwin saw France as his ,,home away from home". 
 Nonetheless, Baldwin went back to the United States and was politically active - he worked with Malcolm X and Dr. King and was part of the March on Washington. Apart fron that he had a career as a writer and became a teacher. 
 ,,Giovanni's Room" is a novel about the young American David who is left alone in Paris after his girlfriend has gone off to Spain to contemplate his marriage proposal. Within the first chapter the reader learns that David fell in love with another man, Giovanni, and that this man is ,,about to perish, sometime between this night and this morning, on the guillotine." This revelation of the ending indicates that the novel is mostly told in flashbacks and that it wasn't Baldwin's aim to create a suspenseful lovestory but to examine human nature - precisely what it means to be a man and how homosexuality and bisexuality play into that. Baldwin also deals with the topic of loneliness, rejection and 'Heimat'. 
 This novel was extremely hard to rate; initially I wanted to give it a 3-star-rating because I couldn't connect to any of the characters and therefore their battles didn't hit me that hard but after watching the discussion which I linked above I learned that creating a barrier between the characters and the reader might have been exactly what Baldwin intended. 
 Due to the frequent verb tense shifts from past over present to future, and the fact that Baldwin disclosed the ending of the story by the 5th paragraph, Baldwin intentionally created a sense of disconnect. He might have wanted the reader to feel what David felt - which is a sense of loss and being in a state of constant confusion. Additionally to that, the people on the discussion panel argued that Baldwin makes a clear case for time doesn't dictate meaning, despite the novel's odd structure and frequent jumps in time, it still makes sense, actually Baldwin's messages are enhanced. I found this analysis so interesting that I increased my rating to 4 stars. 
 Despite the fact that this novel deals with a lot of imporant issues and Baldwin clearly was ahead of his time, the thing I loved most about ,,Giovanni's Room" was the atmosphere which Baldwin created. Paris is my favorite city in the world and - at least from a tourist's perspective - Baldwin just got it so right. I felt like I was back in Paris and all of the settings were real and I could picture them so well. In addition to the atmospheric localities, I think that Baldwin managed to wove his personal feelings (as a writer and person) in the novel which I highly appreciated, e.g.: 
 My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across deathladen plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past. 
 or 
 ,,I don't see why the world is so new for Americans," said Giovanni. ,,After all, you are all merely emigrants. And you did not leave Europe so very long ago." 
 I don't wanna come off rude but a white writer probably wouldn't have put thought into that and so you could tell that the quotes above was not David's view on his heritage, but Baldwin's statement on colonialism. 
 In general it was fascinating to decipher how Baldwin's personal experiences played into this novel, Baldwin left for France after feeling left out out of the American and black community in Harlem because he was gay, David leaves for Paris to ,,find himself". David had a sexual encounter in his youth that clearly took its toll on him mentally. He couldn't unite his desire for another man with his identity of being male in itself. This is probably due to the lack of good role models in David's life. His father is a drunk who sleeps around and whose definition of being male is basically being ,,a bull" (how his aunt Ellen puts it). Whenever David thinks back on his first sexual experience with a boy, he is conflicted with desire and disgust. 
 Perhaps it was because he was so much smaller than me; my own body suddenly seemed gross and crushing and the desire which was rising in me seemed monstrous. 
 or 
 We were not like father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies. I think my father sometimes actually believed this. I never did. [...] What passed between us as masculine candor exhausted and appalled me. Fathers ought to avoid utter nakedness before their sons. I did not want to know - not anyway, from his mouth, that his flesh was as unregenerate as my own. 
 The other older male figures in David's life are Guillaume, who runs the local gay bar, and Jacques, who is a frequent costumer there. David and Giovanni are both disgusted with them, calling their mannerism ,,fairy"-like and repugnant. You could almost say that David and Giovanni are arrogant in their youth, feeling like their bodies and their expression of being gay is superior to the way of Jacques and Guillaume. 
 And granted I much prefered David and Giovanni flirting with one another than Jacques sleeping with younger men knowingly that they were just milking him for his money but I cannot deny the fact that Jacques got things right, and wasn't as oblivious as David. 
 "You think", he [Jacques] persisted, ,,that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are." 
 or 
 ,,And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty - they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty [...] - if you will not be ashamed, if you will not play it safe." 
 or 
 ,,Somebody," said Jacques, ,,your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it." 
 Being not homosexual myself, I feel weird judging the authencity of David's inner struggle but I found it to be very authentic - not necessarily relatable (because as I said before I am not gay and was priveleged enough to never been shamed for my sexuality) - and the pressure that was laid on him seemed so real. His father pressuring him to come back home and David's fear that once he will return to the United States, it will no longer feel like home. The prospect of his girlfriend Hella coming back from Spain and wanting to resume their relationship. Being trapped in Giovanni's room and feeling like he can't escape the desire that he feels for him, but also feeling guilty because Giovanni showed David his vulnerable side and really let him in, and David is still emotionally distancing himself from Giovanni and is constantly thinking how he can escape from Giovanni's room. 
 I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. [...] Life in that room seemed to be occuring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea-change there. 
 and 
 I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his last retreat. I was to destroy this room and give Giovanni a new and better life. This life could be my own, which, in order to transform Giovanni's, must first become part of Giovanni's room. 
 It is with horror that the reader witnesses the destruction of Giovanni's room which is woven through the entire story. David's decision to get back together with his girlfriend leaving a heartbroken Giovanni behind who in his desperation becomes a ,,fairy" and starts sleeping with Jacques and Guillaume for money - something that used to appall him. And finally Giovanni's execution which David doesn't witness first-hand but which alters him forever. 
 There are a lot of things which I didn't touch upon in this review, e.g. David's relationship with women and how his girlfriend Hella defines what it is like to be a woman. There is lots to discover in ,,Giovanni's Room" and I'm pretty sure I will re-read it some time and take different things from it than I did now. James Baldwin is a very gifted writer and now I desperately want to read some of his nonfiction - ,,Notes of a Native Son" sounds brilliant!