Later Novels: Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone / If Beale Street Could Talk / Just Above My Head

Here for the first time in one volume are James Baldwin's revealing novels of the late 1960s and '70s: Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Just Above My Head. In these ambitious and deeply reflective works Baldwin responds with searching intelligence and his signature passion—for music, for justice, for life—to the new realities of a rapidly changing cultural landscape, as the Civil Rights era gave way to the age of identity politics. Dramatizing the unequal treatment of African American men by the police and the justice system, depicting the black family with insight and sensitivity, and exploring the emotional depths and ambiguities of sexuality, these three novels show how Baldwin continues to speak to twenty-first century America. A companion volume collects Baldwin's three earlier novels.