If Beale Street Could Talk opens with the narrator, Tish, looking at herself in the mirror. She meditates on her nickname and reveals that she was "christened" Clementine, which does not seem immediately related to her nickname, Tish. She then reveals that she went to see Fonny, her lover, earlier that day. Fonny is in jail, and they are forced to speak to each other through a wall of glass. Tish tells Fonny that she is pregnant. Tish expresses worry and doubt about revealing this news to Fonny, because she knows that he will worry about the baby while he is in jail. However, she also hopes that it will give him joy in this difficult period of his life. She begins to cry and assures Fonny that she is happy that she is pregnant. While Fonny processes the news, Tish narrates that she and Fonny are not married—they were planning on getting married, but then he went to jail. Once Fonny gets over his shock, he begins to laugh and expresses joy. After, he asks Tish if she has told Frank, Fonny's father, yet. Tish tells him that he is the first person that she has told. Fonny then has to go back to his cell; he and Tish raise their fists to each other through the glass before he goes.
Following her visit with Fonny in jail, Tish takes the bus home, because it takes longer than the subway and she wants time to think. She meditates on what it's like being in trouble, saying that it changes the way you see the world and the people around you. Being in trouble also makes a person question whether or not they can lean on their usual sources of support, which makes them feel afraid. She then wonders what people could do to help her even if they wanted to. She is aware that there is a stigma surrounding going to and being in jail, even if you are outside of jail but love someone who is locked up. This leads Tish to feel very isolated because of her situation: "Trouble means you're alone" (8). She swears to herself that if Fonny ever makes it out of jail, she is never going back to that part of New York City, downtown, ever again. Tish has good memories of downtown New York from her childhood when her father used to take her and her sister to go sightseeing. Now that she is older, Tish is aware of the heightened racial tensions in that part of the city, and how white people are discriminatory towards black people there. Tish feels acutely aware of her race, and feels like an outsider when walking around downtown New York. She remembers that the people on the street treated her family as if they were "zebras" (9). Finally, Tish decides that New York must be the worst city in the world.
Tish reveals that she met Fonny in New York when they were younger: she was about six years old and he was about nine. She and Fonny lived across the street from each other in Harlem. Tish tells us a little bit about Fonny's family; he has two older sisters and his father runs a tailor shop. In retrospect, Tish wonders who the customer base of Frank's tailor shop is, as everyone in her community doesn't seem like they have enough money to take clothes to the tailor. This leads her to meditate on the current economic state of African American people, saying that they aren't as disadvantaged as they were when her parents were younger. She adds that her parents weren't as disadvantaged as they were in the South. She notes, however, that black people throughout history in America have been "certainly poor enough" (10).
Tish remembers that the first time she truly met Fonny was once when they got into a fight after school. Tish's best friend growing up, Geneva, had it out for Fonny, who was friends with a group of rebels. Tish recalls that Fonny's friend, Daniel, felt the same way about Geneva that Geneva felt about Fonny. Even though Tish does not remember how it started, she knows that eventually, Daniel had pushed Geneva to the ground. As Tish tried to get Daniel off of Geneva, Fonny tried to get her off of Daniel. In response, Tish hit Fonny in the face with a wooden stick that had a rusty nail sticking out of it. The nail drew blood on Fonny's face, and Tish was shocked and scared. Tish ran away from Fonny, and once he caught up to her, he spat at her through a hole in his mouth where he used to have teeth. This humiliated Tish so much that she began to cry. In retrospect, Tish wonders if her life changed the exact moment that Fonny's spit entered her mouth. Geneva and Daniel, seeing the blood on Fonny's face, began to yell at Tish. Geneva told Tish that she had killed Fonny, as people get lockjaw from rusty nails and die all the time. In response to this, Fonny began to cry, too. Geneva and Daniel took him home and left Tish in the street alone.
Tish describes what happened following the fight with Geneva, Daniel, and Fonny. She worries that she actually did give Fonny lockjaw from the rusty nail and convinces herself that he is on the brink of death. Geneva tells Tish that the second Fonny dies from lockjaw, the cops will come to get Tish and put her on death row. From her house across the street, Tish watches Frank's tailor shop, takes note of Fonny's parent's actions, and attempts to read whether or not they are worried about Fonny through their interactions with each other. A few days after the fight, Tish waits until the tailor shop is empty and goes to talk to Frank. Once they exchange pleasantries, Frank guesses why Tish is in his shop and tells her Fonny is on a trip. He tells her that he believes his son will be home soon. He reveals to Tish that Mrs. Hunt sent Fonny to the country because he was getting in too much trouble in New York.
Following this, Tish leaves the barbershop to find Geneva on her stoop. Geneva insults her. Tish confronts her for telling her that Fonny would die, and runs up to her room to sit on the fire escape, where no one can see her. Once Fonny returns from the country, he intercepts Tish on her stoop with two doughnuts in his hands. Fonny and Tish exchange apologies, and from that moment on they are friends. Tish compares their relationship at that stage to that between a brother and sister, in which they "got to be, for each other, what the other missed" (14). Geneva gets mad at Tish and their friendship ends, which Tish attributes to her new relationship with Fonny. Daniel also gets mad at Fonny, and they stop being friends for a while.
Tish moves into a recollection about how Mrs. Hunt forced Fonny to go to church every Sunday because she was determined to save Fonny's soul. In retrospect, Tish reveals that she thinks all the church visits of his childhood is what made Fonny the rebel he is. Tish believes that once you get to know him, Fonny is actually a very sweet man. She also meditates on Frank's relationship with his son, as they are closest to each other in the Hunt family. She uses parallelism to show how similar they are and how it translates into their love for her.
Tish then remembers asking Fonny whether his parents ever had sex. Fonny responds that they do, but it is unlike the sex that he and Tish have with each other. There is an extended quotation of Fonny's description of his parents' sexual encounters, in which Fonny explains how they liken their sexual relations to a union with the Christian God. Fonny then expresses his gratitude at his father for not leaving him. He believes that if he didn't exist, Frank would have left his family a long time ago. Tish then meditates on the type of love that allows people to laugh together as they make love to each other, and how that is what she and Fonny have. She sees her relationship with Fonny in this way as special: "The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there" (17).
Tish recounts going to church with Fonny and Mrs. Hunt one Sunday in the past. Tish agrees to go with Fonny, even though her family is Baptist and Mrs. Hunt attends a Sanctified Church. Tish considers this trip to the church as their first date, even though Mrs. Hunt was with them the whole time. Tish recalls knowing Mrs. Hunt did not like her even when she was little. Tish knows this because Mrs. Hunt never wanted Tish around at their house even though Fonny was always at hers. Tish thinks that Mrs. Hunt considers Tish as not good enough for Fonny and exactly what he deserves at the same time. Tish then meditates on her appearance, stating that she looks average and that Fonny does not bother to call her pretty and instead says that "pretty girls are a terrible drag" (18).
Tish reveals that Mrs. Hunt and Fonny's sisters are "fair skinned," which makes them different from Fonny and Frank. Mrs. Hunt used to be very beautiful when she lived in Atlanta, and she still carries the vestiges of that beauty with her. The fact that Mrs. Hunt and her daughters have lighter skin than Tish causes Mrs. Hunt to look down on Tish. On that Sunday, Mrs. Hunt gives Tish a smile and tells her she looks pretty for church, but Tish knows that she does not truly mean it.
After the Hunts pick up Tish, they walk down to the Sanctified church. As they walk, Tish takes note of her neighborhood and the different phases one could find within it. Tish sees the unexpected and hidden strife that households in her neighborhood contain on a Saturday afternoon when everyone is home together. If you are looking closely, you can tell it from who is outside in the streets and the ways that the mothers "yell for their children" to come home (20). For this reason, Sunday mornings are better than Saturday afternoons. If Saturday afternoons are like a cloudy day, then Sunday mornings are when "the clouds have lifted" (20). In Tish's neighborhood, on Sundays, everyone is dressed up and ready for church. She feels like she is walking through a fair as she walks with Fonny and Mrs. Hunt beside her on the sidewalk.
While they are approaching the church, Mrs. Hunt asks Tish what church she attends. Tish reveals to the audience that her family hardly ever goes to church, but tells Mrs. Hunt that her family goes to Abyssinia Baptist. Mrs. Hunt, in a backhanded compliment, tells Tish that she attends a "very handsome church" (21). The group arrives at the church at 11 AM, and Tish notes that Fonny did not go to Sunday school that morning because he brought a guest to church. Tish moves on to describe the Sanctified church, stating that it had originally been a post office, and is "long and dark and low" (22). Tish takes note of the differences between the Hunts' church and her family's church, and describes which songs she associates with each one.
Tish moves on to discuss speaking in tongues or being possessed by the Holy Ghost at this church, wondering if it will happen today. She notes that this doesn't often happen in her church, because they are more "respectable" and "civilized" than the Sanctified church. When they enter the church, the congregation's heads turn to watch them. Tish notes that she does not remember what color Mrs. Hunt's dress was anymore, but that it stands out in the darkness of the church. The way that Mrs. Hunt enters the church affects Tish: "She was saved the moment she entered the church, she was Sanctified holy, and I even remember until today how much she made me tremble, all of a sudden, deep inside" (24). Mrs. Hunt marches Tish and Fonny to the front and center pew and they all sit down.
Fonny and Tish sit next to each other during the service, and even though they are not touching or looking at each other, Tish feels as though they are "holding on to each other, like children in a rocking boat" (25). As the sermon progresses, Tish feels like the church begins to rock. Tish and Fonny realize without speaking to each other that the people who love them are not in that church in that moment. Mrs. Hunt and a lady with a rose on her hat begin dancing "the holy dance" as the rest of the congregation watch them (26). Tish feels pure terror.
Back in the present, after having told Fonny that she is pregnant, Tish decides that it is time to tell her mother, sister, father, and Frank. Her intention is to tell Frank before she tells her own family members, but she feels sick as soon as she gets off the bus and decides to just go home instead. As she heads home, Tish thinks about her mother, Sharon. She relates that Sharon was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and she "used to try to be a singer." Sharon left the South when she was 19 by running away with a traveling band while dating the drummer. She makes it to Albany, New York, where she feels like she is drowning. She meets Joseph, a merchant seaman, at a bus stop. Joseph decides on a whim to follow Sharon to New York City. By the time the bus arrives in the city, Joseph is determined to be in Sharon's life. After a week, they are married, and Joseph goes back out to sea while Sharon is left to settle down.
While climbing up the stairs to her apartment, Tish thinks about her plan to live in the East Village, which is in downtown Manhattan, with Fonny because it's cheaper than living in the projects, and Fonny would have more room for his art. Tish also considers the East Village as nicer than other places where they could live in Harlem, which she considers to be "worse than the projects" (31). When Tish arrives at her apartment, no one is there, but five minutes later her mother arrives, carrying a shopping bag. Upon seeing her daughter, Sharon asks Tish how Fonny is doing and whether the lawyer has gone to visit him yet. When Tish says no, Sharon sighs and moves to start putting the groceries away.
For a moment, Tish feels nervous to tell her mother the news, until she hears her mother humming in a way that makes her think that somehow, her mother already knows the news. In the end, Tish does not have to speak the words to her mother at all because Sharon already knows. Sharon also correctly guesses how far along Tish is, and puts her to bed before her father and sister come home. To comfort Tish, Sharon pulls her into her arms and rocks her while she cries. She makes sure to tell her daughter that she shouldn't worry about being a "bad girl," because she knows she isn't. She also assures her daughter that she and Fonny would be married by now if it weren't for the "white man" (33).
Sharon calms Tish and tells her that she will make the family announcement that Tish is pregnant. She then leaves Tish to go work in the kitchen. When the doorbell rings, she brings a small glass of whiskey to her daughter in order to calm her down. Sharon then goes to answer the door for Joseph, and from the bedroom where she is resting, Tish can hear his laugh. Tish overhears her parents' conversation and imagines them from the bedroom.
While she is resting, Tish thinks about how Fonny gave Sharon one of the first pieces of sculpture that he made: "It's not very high, it's done in black wood. It's of a naked man with one hand at his forehead and the other half hiding his sex" (35). Tish tells the speaker that Fonny used to go to vocational school where he learned a lot of useless knowledge. The vocational school is stigmatized as being for "dumb" kids, but Tish says that the kids aren't "dumb"—it's just the system that's broken. Fonny dropped out of vocational school, taking a bunch of wood from the woodshop with him. Tish states that making sculptures saved Fonny from "the death that was waiting to overtake the children of [their] age" (36). This epidemic is caused by the system undervaluing poor children and the fact that "everything they saw around them proved it" (36). Fortunately, Fonny is able to overcome that toxic mentality through his art. Tish reveals that she believes she and Fonny saved each other from the hard circumstances they come from.
Tish remembers that in addition to his sculpting, Fonny saved himself by getting a job as a line cook, finding a basement where he could do his art, and spending more time in the Rivers household than at his own. In the Hunt household, Tish reveals, "there was always fighting" (37). The constant fighting drives Frank out of the house, too, who goes to the Rivers house often pretending he is looking for Fonny. Because Frank is an alcoholic, he also spends a lot of his time in bars. Tish tells the reader that over the years, he has developed a drinking problem and has lost the tailor shop. Now, he is working in the garment center, and depending on his son in the way that his son used to depend on him. Tish angrily states that the "same passion" which saved Fonny through his sculpture also had a role in putting him in jail, since he refused to be "anybody's nigger," which put him on the police's radar when he moved downtown.
Analysis
The first few pages of Beale Street introduce us to Tish, the narrator of the novel. Tish's voice is endearing, personal, and authentic. The nature of her storytelling feels more like spontaneous conversation than planned speech. Trudier Harris, in her 1978 essay on Beale Street, calls Tish's voice "youthful" and "unsophisticated," and notes that it "adds a measure of credence to the narration." In this way, Baldwin endows Tish with a voice that feels like the voice of a 19-year-old, which adds a sense of three-dimensionality to the character, and lifts her off the page into the real world. For example, we see Tish reevaluate what she says in real time as she tells us her story: "I'm tired, and I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like if it didn't make sense, how could it happen? But that's a really terrible thought" (3). Because Tish places evaluations on what she thinks, in a way that comes off as honest and even self-deprecating, there is a sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader. Her story feels all the more real, as if it were coming from a close friend who hasn't seen you in years and is catching you up on the events of her life. Similarly, Tish shows self-conscious narration later on in this section: "I should have said already: we're not married" (5). Baldwin gives Tish awareness that she is telling a story, which means that the scenes she chooses to portray to the reader have been chosen and placed together in a larger narrative for a reason. This allows Tish to jump around in time as she tells her story, while at the same time maintaining a sense of narrative arc in the novel as a whole. As we will see throughout this work, Tish's narrative style lifts what would otherwise be a dark and depressing novel into one tinged with hope, which is (as is discussed further in the "Literary Elements" section), the true spirit of the blues.
In the opening few pages of Beale Street, Tish reveals the central conflicts of the novel at large. The first is that her partner, Fonny, is in jail for a crime that she believes he did not commit; the second is that she is pregnant at a time of "trouble" in her life. The third, perhaps the deepest and insidious conflict that runs through If Beale Street Could Talk, is the racial tension that she feels in the city in which she lives. It is racism that, in various ways, has led to Fonny being unjustly imprisoned. Racism also makes Tish acutely aware of the different communities that she traverses in New York City in her day-to-day life. While she is in "the Tombs" visiting Fonny, she picks up on the racial demographics of the other people in the jail: "I've never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the shame of proud Puerto Ricans who don't understand what's happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail" (7). In this passage, Tish identifies with the other women of color who have to endure what she is also going through—having a "loved [one] in jail." The long description of these women, as well as the extended sentence broken up by rhythmic commas, create a sense of community and collectivity within the visiting areas of the Tombs. In contrast, Tish is acutely aware of the other people on the street when she is in "downtown New York" with her father. Downtown Manhattan, where Joseph Rivers takes his daughters, is home to the financial district and Wall Street; it is a place of heightened class and racial divisions. When Tish and her family are in downtown Manhattan, the city feels hostile towards them: "They looked at us as though we were zebras—and, you know, some people like zebras and some people don't. But nobody ever asks the zebra" (9). In this passage, there is a clearly demarcated "us" and "them." The "us" is Tish and her family; the "them" are the white people downtown who treat the Rivers family like outsiders or foreign invaders. Tish emphasizes that this racist logic is made up and imposed on them, yet the Rivers family is forced to conform to it. Despite this, Joseph makes sure to make his daughters feel loved, which allows Tish to remember these outings fondly.
As Tish looks "at [her]self in the mirror" in the first line of Beale Street, she introduces the reader to her unconscious thoughts and feelings. Baldwin made the decision to introduce the reader to Tish in media res (i.e. in the middle of an action) as she digests and categorizes the situation she is in. Instead of describing her physical body in the mirror, Tish turns to a discussion on names—an issue which will be a major theme of Beale Street. As we will see later, this theme extends throughout the novel and has salient consequences for Tish and Fonny. Tish mediates on her nickname, which is different from her given name, though she does not know why. She also reveals that Fonny's given name is Alonzo, which is not related to his nickname, either. Tish uses Fonny's given name, Alonzo, to break the news that she is pregnant. By using his "christened" name, she is using the weight of an unfamiliar identifier to catch his attention: "I only call him Alonzo when I have to break some real heavy shit to him" (3). The emphasis on names and naming at the beginning of this work invokes a sense of community that surrounds Tish and Fonny. Knicknames are created, agreed upon, perpetuated, and normalized through one's community. As we see when Tish breaks the news to Fonny by using his given name, names can also be wielded to influence or lay claim over other people.
Finally, the scene in which Tish and Fonny are speaking to each other through a glass wall expresses the constraint that Tish and Fonny will face throughout the novel. Though they want nothing more than to be together, Tish and Fonny are forced to see each other during visitation at the Tombs. The wall of glass between Fonny and Tish is both literal and metaphorical: Tish and Fonny cannot speak to each other directly at that moment, and they are also being forced apart by a country that will not allow them to live in peace. In this way, the glass wall is a metaphor for the extreme difference in their conditions as a free woman and an incarcerated man. Tish and Fonny can look at each other, but they cannot touch. As Tish laments, "I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass," her wish echoes frustration at the constraint that she has no choice but to endure.
After the visit at the Tombs, we are taken back to Tish's memory of the first time she met Fonny. This section shows how integral New York City is to the narrative of this story, as Tish and Fonny came together "on the streets of this city" (9). Beale Street is filled to the brim with descriptions of community and place, which create a complex cultural world that surrounds the characters as they navigate Tish's pregnancy and Fonny's trial. However, this New York City is not all good: as we saw in the first section, there are tense racial and class divides that the characters must face every day of their lives. Tish's musings about Frank's tailor shops are further evidence of the class divisions of New York in this chapter. While Harlem in the 1970s was (and, to a certain extent, still is) a relatively insular community, Tish cannot think of anyone who could afford to take their clothes to the tailor on a regular basis. Tish is also acutely aware of the socioeconomic divisions of New York, particularly when it comes to race. As Tish says, African Americans feel like they are in a better place economically than when their parents were growing up, and their parents were in a better place economically than the black people living in the South. Behind Tish's mediations is a reference to the Great Migration, in which over six million African Americans moved from rural southern states to the North, Midwest, and West between 1916 and 1970. While Tish can trace a history of improvement, she does not see much hope in the current situation that black people face in America in the 1970s: "we were certainly poor enough," she says, "and we still are" (10).
The line break between the end of Section 1—in which Tish is meditating on why New York City is the "ugliest and dirtiest city in the world"—and the beginning of Section 2 emulates a shift in a train of thought. Tish's thoughts on why her environment is harmful shift to concessions about the good associations she holds of her setting: her personal love story has flourished "on the streets" of the very city she abhors. The shift between these two sections is a good index of Tish's tone throughout Beale Street. While situations in this novel sometimes feel bleak or hopeless, Tish is able to find optimism in them and endows them with a powerful hope. In this way, Beale Street's tone is closely tied to the spirit of the blues, which are about enduring suffering while maintaining a terrible kind of hope.
Tish offers the reader more context for her relationship with Fonny, starting with their first meeting. When Tish goes into the past in her storytelling, the narrative style does not lose any of the visceral immediacy that it has in the present-day narration. Instead, the punctuation and syntax of the sentences themselves heighten drama and bring the reader into Tish's memories as if they were there with her. The scene of the fight is fast-paced and heightened emotionally, as shown by long sentences cut up by commas. For example, the punctuation and syntax in the sentence in which Fonny spits at Tish is as important for expressing emotion in that moment as the content: "He caught me right on the mouth, and—it so humiliated me, I guess—because he hadn't hit me, or hurt me—and maybe because I sensed what he had not done—that I screamed and started to cry. It's funny" (11). This sentence, starting with a shocking encounter in which Fonny does something completely unexpected to Tish, and Tish's subsequent processing of what happened, builds tension with commas and dashes until we have an outpouring of emotion at the end of the sentence. The following sentence, short and clipped, only 2 words long, acts a sharp contrast against the fraught tension at the end of the first sentence. Thus, the sentence acts as a build up until the final catharsis at the end, with a follow-up short sentence that plays off the length of the previous sentence and creates a sense of balance. Finally, the rhythm of these two sentences together show the personal emotional stakes of this encounter as Tish takes a few lines to meditate on her first meeting with Fonny after which, she feels, her life has changed completely.
Tish also makes a distinction, which will be important for the rest of the novel, between doing things because you feel like you should and doing things because you have to. She enters the fight with Geneva because she feels as if she has to protect her friend; she hits Fonny in the face with the board and she does not think about it in the slightest, because he is attacking her and she feels like she must. Tish acts authentically by submitting to her instincts, though it surprises her: "I couldn't believe my eyes, I was so scared" (11). Even though she did not start the fight in the first place, it is this mindless decision that she makes in self-defense that changes her life forever. As we will see in the next section, Tish will reach out to Fonny out of fear, and once he forgives her, they will be inseparable until Fonny is convicted and put in jail.
In this section, Baldwin places men and women on an equal playing field. He does not give the men any particular advantage over the women, even when they are being violent with each other, and Tish is able to use her instincts to get a one-up on Fonny. By the end of the encounter, both Tish and Fonny are crying and defeated; neither was able to get the upper hand. Additionally, Geneva and Daniel's accusations at Tish of "killing" Fonny show the potential that Tish has for exerting some true strength and violence in this scene. The mirroring of Geneva's accusation and Daniel's accusation also express the equality between men and women in this play, as even though they were just fighting with each other, they agree with each other's diagnoses, and work together to bring Fonny home. Baldwin's choice to depict violence between two different genders softens the divide between men and women in the novel, and their relationship becomes much more reciprocal than what is stereotypically presented for a heterosexual relationship.
We also begin to get more context about the members of Fonny's family, their relationships to each other, Tish's relationship to them, and her relationship to Fonny. The basis of all of this interpersonal social navigation is the community that surrounds them in their neighborhood. As Tish says about Mr. Hunt: "Mr. Hunt knew me, then, a little, like we all knew each other on the block" (12). As Tish's encounter with Mr. Hunt in this section shows, the relationships that people form with other members in their community, though perhaps restricted by pleasantries, is hardly superficial. Tish and Mr. Hunt are able to read each other without communicating fully, and Mr. Hunt is able to read Tish's motivations without her having to explain herself to him. Mr. Hunt answers Tish's question about Fonny's whereabouts without her having to ask him; she understands what he is trying to say without fully picking up on the message herself: "I heard what he said, and I understood—something, but I don't know what it was I understood" (13).
This section gives us lots of information about Tish as a narrator. We get a clear picture of the limits of Tish's point-of-view in this section. She is the sole first-person narrator of the work, which means that what we read is limited to what she sees and knows. Her limited knowledge about those around her is evident in her scene with Mr. Hunt in the tailor shop, as he knows exactly what she needs, and yet he is an enigma to her. "I thought he looked at me in a real strange way," she reveals soon after she walked in (12). Similarly, Tish responds in confusion when Mr. Hunt answers her unspoken question about Fonny's whereabouts: "I heard what he said, and I understood—something; but I didn't know what it was I understood (13). Fortunately, Tish's narration works in such a way that she does not allow her knowledge from the present to change her memory of the past. For example, even though Fonny has teeth in his mouth in the present, she notes that "anyone watching Fonny then was sure that he'd grow up without a single tooth in his head" (14). Finally, Tish's narration style still shows the self-awareness that we traced earlier in this guide. When talking about Mrs. Hunt, Tish assures her readers, "we're going to talk about her in a minute" (15). Tish is a conscientious story-teller who has the ability and the responsibility to construct a narrative that is as close to the truth as possible.
Tish's voice embraces a duality when she is discussing scenes from the past. In these moments, her voice is both retrospective and enters the scene of the past completely. For example, a while after Tish went in to talk with Mr. Hunt, Tish is acutely aware of Mr. Hunt's physical body at that moment as well as providing context from where she is in her current moment. Tish takes note of Frank's process: "He pressed the presser down again ... Then he looked up at me and smiled. When I got to know Fonny and got to know Mr. Hunt better, I realized Fonny has his smile" (13). In this passage, we exist both in the past and the present—the scene comes from the past, but it is informed by the present, which adds emotional depth. Thus, Tish's voice is able to inhabit two different states of being at the same time when she is remembering anecdotes from her past.
Finally, in the scene in which Fonny describes his parent's sex life, Fonny uses long, musical sentences full of rhythm. Because of this, there is a double irony at work in this passage: 1) that of a son describing his parents' sex life in romantic, breathy language, and 2) the equation of Mr. and Mrs. Hunt's sex life to being overtaken by the Holy Ghost (Mr. Hunt, in this case, representing the spirit of the Christian God). Because of these disparate elements, Fonny's passage about his parents stands out on the page of Beale Street, particularly because his voice in this extended quotation is so much harsher than Tish's voice. However, this scene also works to establish the comfort and intimacy between Fonny and Tish, as they are able to joke about his parents' sex life and compare it to their own. In the end, Tish uses the irony of this moment to teach her audience a lesson about love: "The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there" (17).
The scene at the church also reveals much about the characters. As Tish, Fonny, and Mrs. Hunt make their way to church, Tish notes that “everybody knew that Fonny and I were friends, it was just simply a fact" (18). The community’s understanding that Tish and Fonny are tied together allows Tish to go to a Sanctified church, even though she is a Baptist, without turning heads. Collective community knowledge is a powerful force at this moment in this novel, as Fonny, Tish, and Mrs. Hunt traverse many different communities during their excursion: the communities of their families, that of their neighborhood block, and that of the church. Each of these communities has its own patterns and social codes, and Tish displays her ability to traverse them with ease. Tish displays a deep knowledge of her neighborhood, tracking its stages and movement with the eye of a local: “our streets have days, and even hours” (19). He status as “insider” stems from the fact that she has lived in this neighborhood all her life: “[Harlem is] where I was born, and where my baby will be born” (19-20). Tish knows the underbelly of her neighborhood, which even allows her to predict what everyone will go home to eat: "Later, they're going to eat ham hocks or chitterlings or fried or roasted chicken, with yams and rice and greens or cornbread or biscuits" (20). Tish’s comfort and ease in Harlem sharply contrasts with her feeling of discomfort while she is in downtown New York when she is with her father and later in the novel when she visits Fonny’s apartment in the village.
Tish’s deep knowledge of her community comes with an understanding of the social and cultural divisions it contains. In these pages, Tish reveals to us that Mrs. Hunt and her daughters are all “fair” and that the girls have “long” hair (19). In contrast, Tish describes herself as “dark” and says that her “hair is just plain hair” (18). Fonny is “lighter than [Tish] but much darker than [his mother and sisters]” (19). Tish connects her and Fonny’s physical descriptions to Mrs. Hunt’s condescending “sweet patient smile” when she sees Tish dolled up on the stoop of her house for church (19). This passage reveals the biases within the black community towards achieving beauty which is measured by European standards. Thus, Mrs. Hunt holds more power over Tish since she is a fair-skinned woman, and Tish senses this judgment from Mrs. Hunt. Not only does Tish face this hostility, but Fonny, her own son, faces this same colorism, and this is reflected in Tish’s emphasis on Fonny’s hair, which is “nappy” despite all of his mother’s best efforts on Sunday mornings (19).
Another division in Tish’s community that we find on these pages are the different churches that people attend. When Tish tells Mrs. Hunt that she goes to Abyssinia Baptist with her family, Mrs. Hunt replies “that’s a very handsome church,” and Tish picks up on the unspoken judgment behind her words (12). Additionally, Tish describes the Sanctified church in terms of how it is different from her own. She is frightened by the Sanctified custom of “getting happy” or “falling under the Power” (22-3). Tish also reveals that she considers her church to be more "civilized" than Mrs. Hunt's church. Thus, even though the residents of Harlem in Tish's community are overwhelmingly Christian, they practice different types of Christianity that create divisions and points of conflict among them. Tish does not feel the warm feelings for the Sanctified Church that she does from her childhood. When she begins to visit Fonny in jail, she remembers the feeling of going to church with Mrs. Hunt: "when I first had to go and see him in the Tombs, and walked up those steps into those halls, it was just like walking into church" (26).
The scene at church leads into Tish telling the story of how her parents met, and in this course of this history, Tish reveals that she has a fraught relationship with Christianity and the United States. In a passage that Mrs. Hunt would probably scoff at, she states that she doesn't think that America is a particularly "good" country: "Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody—if it is, God's days have got to be numbered" (28). The fact that Tish says she "must" clarify this point to the reader demonstrates Tish's self-awareness as a narrator as well as her true belief in this idea. In the same breath, Tish places herself in opposition to Christians: "That God these people say they serve—and do serve, in ways they don't know—has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man" (28). Tish is not part of the "them" that believe in the Christian God. There is also a clear tension in this passage in that Tish does not question God's existence and makes sure to use capitalization when referring to God. Thus, her indictment of the Christian God depends on her belief that he does exist. In this way, Tish belongs to the Christian community in her beliefs and yet is separate from it in her criticisms.
Throughout Beale Street, Tish displays a storytelling method in which she stacks stories on top of each other. She usually does this to relate a story that has been told to her, as when Joseph tells Tish about the first time he saw Sharon. Tish relates: "he says, and I believe him, that he knew he wasn't going to let her out of his sight the moment he saw her walk away from the ticket window and sit down by herself on a bench and look around her. She was trying to look tough and careless, but she just looked scared. He says he wanted to laugh, and, at the same time, something in her frightened eyes made him want to cry" (28). In this story, Tish does not leave behind the richness of detail and emotion that Joseph used when he first told her. Instead, she uses his memories and details in her own retelling of his story. The voice in passages like these, therefore, becomes akin to two voices, as Tish's voice is layered on top of Joseph's.
The socioeconomic tensions of New York City are also apparent in the passage in which Tish describes her parents' love story. When Joseph first meets Sharon, he lies and says that he is traveling to New York in order to visit his uncle. He tells Sharon that his uncle lives in downtown New York, near Wall Street, which betrays his ignorance of the city: "He hardly new New York at all ... and he gave Mama an address just off the top of his head, which made her look even more frightened. It was addressed somewhere down off Wall Street" (29). As the above passage shows, Sharon is "frightened" by Joseph's story, because, as she knows, only "white people" live down there. This, in turn, causes Sharon to believe that Joseph is crazy. Throughout the novel, downtown New York exists as a place that holds tension and fear because of the racial tensions it heightens. (Remember that the Tombs, the jail where Fonny is kept, is also in downtown New York). However, it also paradoxically is a place of warmth and love for Tish, where her relationship with Fonny is given space to evolve because of the apartment Fonny has in the Village before he gets arrested.
When Sharon and Tish converse about Tish's pregnancy for the first time, Sharon assures Tish that it is not her or Fonny's fault that they are unmarried and expecting a baby. She rationalizes the position her daughter is in, saying that slaves were not allowed to marry on plantations, either: "'when we was first brought here, the white man he didn't give us no preachers to say words over us before we had our babies'" (33). In this way, Sharon calls upon African American history and implies that marriage is an institution that black people were denied when they first came to America. She also assures her daughter that she and Fonny would "'be together, married or not, wasn't for that same damn white man'" (33). Tish places the blame of the situation, not on Tish and Fonny, but on the white institution that has historically acted upon black peoples' lives without their control. Thus, Tish and Fonny's situation is not an autonomous choice and is instead a result of the society that works against them. Additionally, Christianity is inherently tied into this institution, which implicates it in the oppression that African Americans face. This passage shows that Sharon thinks very similarly to her daughter, who, just a few pages earlier, condemns the Christian God for all the evil that he allows to exist in the world.
Tish displays an intimate knowledge of her family while she is resting before the family announcement. She knows exactly what they are doing, even from behind a closed door: "By now, Mama had poured herself some gin and orange juice and was sitting at the table opposite him. She was swinging her foot; she was thinking ahead" (35). By allowing Tish to guess what her family is up to and relay it as fact through her knowledge of the family, Baldwin pushes the boundaries of the first-person narrator. Later on in the novel, when Sharon goes to Puerto Rico, we will see the first-person limited narration merge into a first-person omniscient narration.
Fonny's sculpture, which is described in detail while Tish is lying down, is an important object in Beale Street. Tish takes Fonny's sculpture seriously and analyzes it with an artistic eye. She describes the sculpture's positioning in academic terms: "The legs are long, very long, and very wide apart, and one foot seems planted, unable to move, and the whole motion of the figure is torment" (35). The sculpture itself expresses self-protection and the "torment" of masculinity when you are being persecuted for your race. The sculpture seems to want to "move" and is unable to unstick itself as if it were trying its hardest to escape its situation but there are other forces holding it down. Tish's description, then, elevates the sculpture from mere prop to a symbol of self-reclamation and protest in a society that continuously targets you and pushes you down. For Fonny, his art means liberation: "For, you see, he had found his center, his own center, inside him: and it showed. He wasn't anybody's nigger. And that's a crime, in this fucking free country" (38). Through his art, Fonny enacts a refusal to belong to anybody else and claims the right to make autonomous choices. This is reflected through his decision to drop out of vocational school as well as his acting to protect Tish later on in the novel when he believes she is being threatened by a white man. Unfortunately, even though Fonny's art allows for internal liberation, it also leads him to be even more of a target for racist authorities. Tish tells us, "you're suppose to be somebody's nigger. And if you're nobody's nigger, you're a bad nigger: and that's what the cops decided when Fonny moved downtown" (38). By crossing over from Harlem into downtown Manhattan, Fonny makes himself even more of a target for the police, which is exacerbated by his own sense of self.
