Just Above My Head

“If Van Gogh was our nineteenth century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our twentieth century one.”—Michael Ondaatje

“The work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers . . . glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, moments of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks—scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A fine novel . . . it seems impossible for [Baldwin] to write with anything other than eloquence.  His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in late-twentieth-century America.”—The New Yorker