Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth novel, first published in 1979. The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing 'incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York, Paris.' The novel enmeshes racism with homophobia, with an 'explicit association of Birmingham and Sodom' . It has been suggested that the novel links the trope of the internalisation of history to what W. E. B. Du Bois defined as the African American's 'longing to attain self-conscious... manhood.' It has been suggested that Crunch subscribes to the idea propounded by Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Cesare Lombroso that homosexuality was inscribed upon a homosexual's flesh, when he wonders, "if his change was visible".
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| Author: | James Baldwin |
| Genre: | Novel, Fiction |
| Year published: | 1979 |
| Number of editions: | 7 |