James Baldwin’s Another Country: Bookmarked

Novelist McLarin (Jump at the Sun) reflects on the personal and creative inspiration she has found in Another Country, James Baldwin’s 1962 novel, in this discerning work of criticism. “Another Country is a novel about fear and love and innocence and masculinity and white supremacy and anti-blackness and also about the ways sexuality intersects with all of those things,” McLarin writes. McLarin unveils the complexities of the novel’s central archetypes: Ida, the strong Black woman suffering from “the lack of Black female connection,” and Rufus, who “made the fatal mistake of believing what white people say about him.” McLarin is both generous and critical of Baldwin, acknowledging the undercurrents of misogyny in his writing, and is an astute and sensitive reader. Her introspective study is filled with insight about interracial love (“Of the three interracial couples in Another Country, two are doomed from the start”), “the fantasies” of American masculinity, and the importance of Black sisterhood (as Ida navigates “the treacherous waters of America without sisters at her side). Baldwin fans will be delighted by this fresh take. (Feb.)