To Say Yes to Life”

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1962), two of the first works of fiction in the U.S. to openly address same-gender desire, have often been read as “homosexual novels” because the main male characters in each book pursue sexual relationships with other men. Seemingly, it is assumed that any expression of same-gender desire automatically makes a person, and by extension a text, gay. Such a framework is not only short-sighted, but also offbase, as all of the leading male characters in the two works are sexually involved with both men and women. However, simply reinterpreting them as “bisexual novels” would scarcely be more appropriate, for none of the characters explicitly identifies as bisexual, and Baldwin sought to foster meanings that move beyond narrow identity categories, believing that all people had to leave their lives open to both women and men in order to experience life and not be trapped in one aspect of themselves

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