Fordham High School Senior Kaylee Martinez on "If Beale Street Could Talk"
Kaylee Martinez is a senior at Fordham High School for the Arts in the Bronx. She is concentrating in theater tech. She was an intern with Literature to Life through the CTE Internships Program, funded by the NYC Department of Education.
I read the book If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin and then watched a recorded performance of the Literature to Life one-actor performance of the book. Here are some of my thoughts:
If Beale Street Could Talk is a very powerful book about two families that dislike each other but their children (Tish and Fonny) fall in love with one another. Throughout the book you slowly get to see the power behind coming together and how two families that once hated each other help each other out to get one person they love out of a terrible situation. Together the family has to work to free Fonny from jail for rape, a terrible crime he did not commit.
Personally, when I first opened up the book I believed it was going to be about a lost lover or a tragic love story where two main characters die or have to run away. But to my surprise the book was somewhat like that but with a realistic ending.
I can relate to Tish and the way she and everyone else in the book talk to each other. They are New Yorkers who talk like me and my family.
Tish and I are similar in lifestyles. We both work hard, her at work and me at school. Tish cares for her family and will do anything for them. Tish also values her lover Fonny, making sure that he’s good and everything, and I do the same for my boyfriend. Tish is always showing people that she will never give up on what she has been working hard on. She never gives up on Fonny and his case. She never gives up on her family.
A quote from Tish which stuck with me is: “I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.'' Tish said this when she went to see Fonny and how sad she was to see him all messed up and broken from the situation she and him are in.
Even though it’s a love story, the book never forgets or bypasses Fonny being in jail, and his trial plays a huge part in the story. When I got to the last part of the book where Tish has her baby and Fonny is free but having his trial, I experienced mixed emotions, from anger to happiness to sadness to all of the above. I wanted Fonny freed from jail but he wasn't. He was still having his trial and still not free 100%. And what makes it more heartbreaking is Fonny didn’t get to be there for the birth of his child. In the end, I feel sorry for the child because of the world it was born into.
Fonny’s accuser Victoria miscarried her baby while the trial was going to happen, and when that happened the trial for Fonny was postponed much later. Fonny’s father couldn’t take the pain and committed suicide while Tish’s and Fonny’s baby was being born. Tish says “from one death comes a new life.” I cried when Tish ended the novel like that instead of a happy ending. It’s a fairy tale kind of love, but a realistic and really tough situation.
Having one person act out an entire play is new to me and very creative. I was in awe when I watched Literature to Life actor Channie Waites bring all of If Beale Street Could Talk to life on her own. The anger, pain, and sadness is so felt all throughout the play. I feel the situations that each character is going through and how real they are, from Tish talking to Fonny through the glass to Fonny talking to Tish’s father about marriage. The switch between each character is done convincingly, and incorporates each and every conversation from the book.
To portray each character, Channie Waites perfectly changes her posture, voice, and mannerisms to show that she’s playing a different gender, a different personality, and that none of the characters are the same. The biggest thing that was brought to my attention while seeing the book being played out was my imagination of it all. With Channie doing everything I was imagining when I was reading the book, I felt like my own thoughts were being played out right in front of me. That level of acting and writing is beautiful. It’s ecstatically good. Even though the story itself is so heavy, I felt excited watching it come to life.
The voice of Tish is exactly like I wanted it. Her facial expressions are what I always thought she looked like and all the different people around her how they spoke, walked, and talked all were in my head and were being played right in front of me from head to toe. From Tish to Fonny breaking down to the difficult family dynamic, it was all there and I loved it all. It feels all so real. Like I said, the book itself is very realistic; it’s not a happy ending type of story. Watching the play felt like the book was a real story happening in real time.