Hitting the Books with Gary Thorne: "If Beale Street Could Talk"

Let's hit the books with one of this country's most influential writers on matters of race relations in the United States - James Baldwin. "If Beale Street Could Talk" was written in 1974, but it could have been written today, and we would recognize the story as one of current events.

A young black man is wrongly charged with rape and the story of his fight for freedom is told through the eyes of his pregnant fiancée. The characters are painfully real without exaggeration.

One feels the box this young man turns in day after day with seemingly no exit.

Sadly, we can substitute names of young black men out of today's news headlines into this story and never miss a beat on the details. Equally sad, we can substitute the story line of Baldwin's book into today's news stories of race violence and yesterday becomes today.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a review of the book in 1974 for the New York Times. She said, "It is so vividly human and so obviously based on reality, that it strikes us as timeless-an art that has not the slightest need of esthetic tricks, and even less need of fashionable apocalyptic excesses."

Forty years later, nothings changed.

From Judy Cooper, Pratt Library's programs and publications coordinator, her recommendation is the 2015 selection for One Maryland One Book: "The Boys in the Boat" by David James Brown.

"Daniel James Brown's bestselling book, 'The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics,' is a dramatic adventure story that will have you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. The crew from the University of Washington, sons of loggers, shipyard workers and farmers, defeated elite rivals from East Coast schools and British universities, and then met up with the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Brown brings these young men to life, along with their enigmatic coach and an eccentric British boat builder."

I read this last summer and had to hold back from reading the end before I got there. Thanks, Judy.

"When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation's slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free." ― Shirley Chisholm, "Unbought And Unbossed"

For more on Baldwin's book, we turn to the videotape.

Gary Thorne is the play-by-play voice of the Orioles on MASN, and the 2015 season is his ninth with the club and 30th covering Major League Baseball. His blog will appear regularly throughout the season. The Enoch Pratt Free Library's Central branch will host "CityLit Festival: Celebrating the Literary Arts in Baltimore" on Saturday, May 2 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Meet and talk literature with more than 50 exhibitors, representing self-published authors, editorial services, literary journals and more.

* Hitting the Books with Gary Thorne. © Copyright 2015 Gary F. Thorne. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Gary F. Thorne and MASNsports.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.