One thing that caught my interest while planning out my blog post, was the question about how people reacted to this novel after it was published. I also wanted to talk about the type of influence it could have in today’s society, and how we are still dealing with hate crimes towards LGBT people today. James Baldwin himself was gay and African American. He was a target of many different hate groups who did not like either of these categories. James Baldwin was gaining popularity after his novel, “Go Tell it on the Mountain” was published. He was told to make his main characters white in order to make it more appealing to the audience who was reading his novels. I was curious about what life would be like for a gay man in the 1950’s, and from my research, I learned that life was not easy. I found a timeline of events that show what kind of events happened to gay people in the 50’s.
James Baldwin most likely wrote “Giovanni’s Room” based on the own experiences of hate he had to deal with in his life. The main character, David, feels shame for his feelings for men in the novel. He knows it is not right in societies eyes, and he feels like he has to be with a woman. The room is a symbol for a place of safety for David. It is a place where he is allowed to be who he is. This is an issue that LGBT people are still dealing with today. There are many people out there who still do not accept them, and that is why a novel like “Giovanni’s Room” is still important today, and why it is also still controversial to some today. In 2016 the 2nd deadliest mass shooting in American history happened at Pulse, which was a gay nightclub. It is sad to think that this hate crime happened at all, but even worse that it happened only 2 years ago.
I had never heard of this book before this class. I do not know if that is because I live under a rock, or because it has never been taught or spoken about at my high school or middle school. I hope that this novel will be taught more, because I believe it is important to have novels like this. James Baldwin got the inspiration of Giovanni being guillotined from an incident that happened to a person he knew in real life. A book like this is not just fiction.
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