Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth and last novel, first published in 1979. He wrote it in his house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

Plot introduction

The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing "incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York City, Paris."

Characters

Major themes

The novel enmeshes racism with homophobia, with an "explicit association of Birmingham and Sodom".

Allusions to other works

Allusions to actual history

Literary significance and criticism

It has been suggested that the novel links the trope of the internalisation of history to what W. E. B. Du Bois defined as the African American's "longing to attain self-conscious manhood". It has been suggested that Crunch subscribes to the idea propounded by Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Cesare Lombroso that homosexuality was inscribed upon a homosexual's flesh, when he wonders, "if his change was visible".