Racism

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions—sexual, racial, political, artistic—that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the late 1950s.

Chickens have inexplicably gained sapience and the United Nations officially recognises the species Gallus Gallus as newest members of the human race. This is the world that Jake Gallo knows, but he still has a chip on his shoulder towards mankind—he chides an employer for her biased hiring practices, scoffs at a woman who sits on him on the bus and criticises his sister when he learns she’s engaged to a man. When he gets a call early one morning, Jake rushes to the bedside of his ailing father, Elmer. Upon his death, Jake’s mother passes him Elmer’s diary, which documented his first moments of consciousness. By discovering the trauma and triumphs of his parents during the tumultuous transition period, Jake finds closure with this father and also makes peace with his own identity.