James Baldwin - Just Above My Head

PENGUIN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CLASSICS

JUST ABOVE MY HEAD

James Baldwin was born and educated in New York. Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, was published in 1953. Evoking brilliantly his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, it was an immediate success and was followed by Giovannis Room, which explores the theme of homosexual love in a sensitive and compelling way. Another Country (1963) created something of a literary explosion and was followed in 1964 by two non-fiction books, Nobody Knows My Name and Notes of a Native Son, which contain several of the stories and essays that brought him fame in America. Nobody Knows My Name was selected by the American library Association as one of the outstanding books of its year. Going to Meet the Man was James Baldwins first collection of stories. He also published several collections of essays, including The Fire Next Time (1963), Nothing Personal (1964), No Name in the Street (1971), The Devil Finds Work (1976) and Evidence of Things Not Seen (1983), and wrote two plays, The Amen Corner (1955) and Blues for Mr Charlie (1965). His later novels include If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Little Man, Little Man (1975). Many of his books are published by Penguin.

James Baldwin won a number of literary fellowships: a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation Grant-in-Aid. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1986. He died in 1987.

The Times obituary declared, The best of his work stands comparison with any of its period to come out of the United States, while Newsweek described him as an angry writer, yet his intelligence was so provoking and his sentences so elegant that he quickly became the black writer that white liberals liked to fear.

Books by James Baldwin

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Notes of a Native Son

Giovannis Room

Nobody Knows My Name

Another Country

The Fire Next Time

Nothing Personal

(with Richard Avedon)

Blues for Mister Charlie

Going to Meet the Man

Tell Me How Long the Trains Been Gone

The Amen Corner

A Rap on Race

(with Margaret Mead)

No Name in the Street

A Dialogue

(with Nikki Giovanni)

One Day When I Was Lost

If Beale Street Could Talk

The Devil Finds Work

Little Man, Little Man. A Story of Childhood

(with Yoran Cazac)

JAMES BALDWIN

JUST ABOVE MY HEAD

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Michael Joseph 1979

Published in Penguin Books 1994

Copyright James Baldwin, 1978,1979

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Portions of this book first appeared in Penthouse

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196380-8

For

My brothers,
George
Wilmer
and
David

and my sisters,
Barbara
Gloria
Ruth
Elizabeth
and
Paula Maria

and
Bernard Hassell
and
Max Petrus