Description
Book Synopsis2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Salvific Manhoodforegrounds the radical power of male intimacy and vulnerability in surveying each of James Baldwin’s six novels.Asserting that manhood and masculinity hold the potential for both tragedy and salvation, Ernest L. Gibson III highlights the complex and difficult emotional choices Baldwin’s men must make within their varied lives, relationships, and experiences.InSalvific Manhood, Gibson offers a new and compelling way to understand the hidden connections between Baldwin’s novels.Thematically daring and theoretically provocative, he presents a queering of salvation, a nuanced approach thatviewsredemption through the lenses of gender and sexuality.
Exploring how fraternal crises develop out of sociopolitical forces and conditions,Salvific Manhoodtheorizes a spatiality of manhood, where spaces in between men are erased through expressions of intimacy and love.Pos
Trade Review
"The author finds an edifying connection between the sanctuary the black church offered and the potential space of intimacy the body offered. Gibson engages in close readings of five seismic novels in the Baldwin canon, masterfully walking readers through the journey of John's forgotten birthday in Go Tell It on the Mountain and the streets of David's Paris in Giovanni's Room. This excellent study may interest those studying religion as well those in the disciplines of literature and cultural studies."—A. P. Pennino, Choice
“Ernest L. Gibson III has given us a beautifully crafted, truly imaginative, and fresh approach to James Baldwin’s work. . . . [It] will be of interest to students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, queer studies, and even religious studies. This is truly an incredibly rich and creative work of scholarship that is not to be missed!”—Dwight A. McBride, coeditor of the James Baldwin Review
“Salvific Manhood pioneers a timely and provocative discussion of James Baldwin’s revolutionary ideas on black masculinity. Professor Gibson reenvisions Baldwin’s novels through fraternal bonds between lovers, kin, and friends, elaborating politics of salvation that simultaneously trouble and bridge spirituality and the erotic.”—Magdalena J. Zaborowska, author of Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: In Search of the Fraternal
1. Wrestling for Salvation: Denial, Longing, and the Beauty of Brotherhood in Go Tell It on the Mountain
2. Flight, Freedom, and Abjection: Fractured Manhood and Tragic Love in Giovanni’s Room
3. Alone in the Absurd: The Trope of Tragic Black Manhood in Another Country
4. Theatrics of Mask-ulinity: Radical Male Intimacy and Black Power in Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
5. Concrete Jungles and the Carceral: Exploring Confinement and Imprisonment in If Beale Street Could Talk
Conclusion: Somewhere in That Wreckage
Notes
Bibliography
Index
