“Under a Foreign Sky:” Place and Displacement in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room

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" “Under a Foreign Sky:” Place and Displacement in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room "
Hamilton, Njelle

Document Type	:	AL
Record Number	:	935626
Doc. No	:	LA7p92b81t
Language of Document	:	English
Main Entry	:	Hamilton, Njelle
Title & Author	:	“Under a Foreign Sky:” Place and Displacement in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room [Article]\ Hamilton, Njelle
Title of Periodical	:	Paroles gelées
Volume/ Issue Number	:	26/1
Date	:	2010
Abstract	:	Critical readings of James Baldwin’s Giovanni Room have largely focused on what is considered its displacement of blackness unto whiteness in the form of the novel’s white protagonist, David, and stage a sort of lynching party to search out and expose to the critical gaze the “absent black man” in the text. Only a few recent readings, beyond biographical surveys of expatriate writers, have considered expatriation outside of Baldwin’s biography and essays, or seriously attempted to locate exile as a key theme and strategy in his fiction. Since, as Méral has noted, Paris is “closely linked with the first fictional attempts to deal with the subject of homosexuality” (223), there must be something about the city which is ripe as a setting for exploration of homosexual themes.