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If Beale Street Could Talk
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If Beale Street Could Talk
Printed slipcase
Quarter-bound in vivid blue cloth, this Folio book features charcoal portraits of Fonny and Tish on the cover, with a wraparound slipcase painting of Harlem in high summer. Inside, fine artist and illustrator Lela Harris contributes six original drawings, accompanied by an illuminating new introduction by Tayari Jones.
If Beale Street Could Talk is blisteringly intimate and unflinchingly political, a novel where every word burns with truth. As Tish and her family fight to clear Fonny’s name, Baldwin lays bare the wounds of a racist system while holding fast to the tenderness between two young people trying to build a life in its ruins.
About the Illustrator
Lela Harris is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the English Lake District. Most of her time is either spent daydreaming about art or making art in her small home studio. A key component of her work is experimenting with materials, discovering new techniques and exploring different subject matters, resulting in an eclectic mix of work. The Folio book of The Color Purple was Lela’s first professional illustration commission. Lela is also a graphic designer and the owner of Doodlelove, a company specialising in limited-edition prints and stationery.
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About the Illustrator
Lela Harris is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the English Lake District. Most of her time is either spent daydreaming about art or making art in her small home studio. A key component of her work is experimenting with materials, discovering new techniques and exploring different subject matters, resulting in an eclectic mix of work. The Folio book of The Color Purple was Lela’s first professional illustration commission. Lela is also a graphic designer and the owner of Doodlelove, a company specialising in limited-edition prints and stationery.
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About the Illustrator
Lela Harris is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the English Lake District. Most of her time is either spent daydreaming about art or making art in her small home studio. A key component of her work is experimenting with materials, discovering new techniques and exploring different subject matters, resulting in an eclectic mix of work. The Folio book of The Color Purple was Lela’s first professional illustration commission. Lela is also a graphic designer and the owner of Doodlelove, a company specialising in limited-edition prints and stationery.
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About the Illustrator
Lela Harris is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the English Lake District. Most of her time is either spent daydreaming about art or making art in her small home studio. A key component of her work is experimenting with materials, discovering new techniques and exploring different subject matters, resulting in an eclectic mix of work. The Folio book of The Color Purple was Lela’s first professional illustration commission. Lela is also a graphic designer and the owner of Doodlelove, a company specialising in limited-edition prints and stationery.
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About the Illustrator
Lela Harris is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the English Lake District. Most of her time is either spent daydreaming about art or making art in her small home studio. A key component of her work is experimenting with materials, discovering new techniques and exploring different subject matters, resulting in an eclectic mix of work. The Folio book of The Color Purple was Lela’s first professional illustration commission. Lela is also a graphic designer and the owner of Doodlelove, a company specialising in limited-edition prints and stationery.
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James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet and social critic. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963) were bestsellers that made him an influential figure in the growing civil rights movement. Baldwin spent much of his life in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in France in 1987, a year after being made a Commander of the French Legion of Honour.
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels: Leaving Atlanta (2002), The Untelling (2005), Silver Sparrow (2011) and An American Marriage (2018), which won the Aspen Words Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his end-of-year roundup. Born in Atlanta, Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. The recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship and a Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship, she is also a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Jones is currently professor of Creative Writing at Emory University and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.