Intersections of Race, Sexuality, and Gender in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room

  • Shuvro Das Jahangirnagar University
Keywords: Race, gender, sexuality, homosexual, heterosexual, dynamics, power, contemporary, intersection

Abstract

James Baldwin is one of the greatest artists of the postmodern era. It will not be an overstatement to say that no author has shaped the narrative of race, sexuality, and gender in Black America, apart from Toni Morrison. Giovanni’s Room (1956) is a powerful testament to Baldwin’s creative and technical genius. The oeuvre of this great writer is very contemporary, even though they were written years ago. This paper intends to examine the racial, sexual, and gender intersections of the said novel. With a close look at feminist thinkers like Toril Moi and Sara Ahmed, sexuality and gender biases are overall addressed. This paper puts an effort to decipher how race and sexuality predominate over people in due course. Despite being a homosexual man himself, Baldwin has to paint homosexuals as powerless and akin to darkness or blackness while heterosexuality rules over as the powerful one. Female characters are relatively weak and granted much space or thought. On top of that, inherent racism pervades the novel like a spear. This paper delves deeper into the realm of dynamics and power struggles, vis-à-vis race, sexuality, and gender.

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Author Biography

Shuvro Das, Jahangirnagar University

Shuvro Das is an enthusiast of literarure, culture and human life . He has completed his B.A (Hons.) in English and M.A in Literature in English and Cultural Studies from Jahangirnagar University. His research interests include, but are not limited to- postcolonialism, contemporary and popular literature, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Rhetoric and Composition. He is currently working as an independent researcher and has a dream of having a PhD in future.

References

Primary Source
1. Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. 1956. Vintage, 1984.

Secondary Sources
1. Armengol, Josep M. “In the Dark Room: Homosexuality and/as Blackness in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.” Signs.vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2012), The University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 671-693. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662699
2. Carroll, Aengus. State-Sponsored Homophobia: A World Survey of Sexual Orientation Laws: Criminalisation, Protection and Recognition. 11th ed. ILGA, 2016.
3. Connell R. W. Masculinities. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 2005, pp. 67-86.
4. Sanchez, Nancy. “Undoing Dominance Depicting the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.” UC Merced Undergraduate ResearchJournal. 9(2), 2017. escholarship.org/uc/item/9zc0b1wj
5. Simmons, Dwan Henderson. “From James’ Portrait to Baldwin’s Room: Dismantlingthe Frames of American Manhood.” Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genre. edited by A. Scott Henderson and P. L. Thomas,vol. 5, Sense Publishers, 2014, pp. 55-75.
6. Philips, Caryl. “Introduction,” Giovanni’s Room, London, Penguin, 2011, p. viii Moi, Toril. What is a Woman?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 68.
7. Ahmed, Sara. “Collective Feelings”, Theory, Culture & Society, 21, 2, 2004, p 156 Ahmed, Sara. “Collective Feelings,” art.cit.p. 15.
Published
2021-05-15
How to Cite
Das, S. “Intersections of Race, Sexuality, and Gender in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room”. Contemporary Literary Review India, Vol. 8, no. 2, May 2021, pp. 91-100, https://literaryjournal.in/index.php/clri/article/view/703.
Section
Research Papers