Baldwin exposes the characters’ inability to
connect with one another and links these fail-
ings to the inability of multiple races, sexualities,
nationalities, and classes to establish common
ground. The novel, vacillating between both time
period and location, is set in Greenwich Village,
Harlem, France, and Alabama. Using loosely con-
nected, almost jazzlike episodes, the novel traces
the multiple affairs—homosexual, heterosexual,
bisexual, and interracial—of Rufus’s surviving
acquaintances as they attempt to understand and
come to terms with his untimely death and si-
multaneously deal with their own shortcomings.
The characters find redemption as they attempt
to reconcile the failure of both Rufus’s and their
own dreams.
A distinctly postmodern work, Baldwin’s in-
tensely psychological novel serves as a testament
to the difficulties of self-love while disrupting and
challenging America’s sexual and racial norms.
Baldwin posits the idea of “another country” as
an individually created locale, free of the restraints
of time and place as well as socially constructed
identities.
Because of the graphic representation of sexu-
ality in Another County, Baldwin was the subject
of an FBI investigation following the complaints
it received from numerous American readers. Fur-
ther, many critics have argued that the distorted
identities of the characters are a direct result of
Baldwin’s inability to define his own boundaries.
Notably, Robert A. Bone cites Baldwin’s narcissism
for the failure of the characters in Another Coun-
t r y. He contends that the author “does not know
where his own psychic life leaves off and that of his
characters begins” (236). However, Charles New-
man, comparing Baldwin to Henry Adams, places
Another Country within the larger spectrum of the
American literary tradition. According to New-
man, in Another Country,
the legend of America as refuge for the op-
pressed, opportunity for the pure in heart, is
invoked only to be exposed. From the very
first, [Baldwin] is saying our vision has been
parochial. We have not accounted for the va-riety of man’s motives, the underside of our
settlers, the costs of a new life.... If Another
Country is formless, it is so because it rejects
the theories of history available to it. (97)BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bone, Robert A. The Negro Novel in America. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965.
Newman, Charles. “The Lesson of the Master: Henry
James and James Baldwin.” In James Baldwin; A
Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Keneth Kin-
namon, 52–65. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, Inc., 1974.
Ohi, Kevin. “ ‘I’m not the boy you want’: Sexuality,
‘Race’ and Thwarted Revelations in Baldwin’s
Another Country.” African American Review 33
(1999): 261–281.
Tuhkanen, Miko. “Binding the Self: Baldwin, Freud
and the Narrative of Subjectivity.” GLQ: A Journal
of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7 (2001): 553–591.
David Shane WallaceAnsa, Tina McElroy (1949– )
Novelist Tina McElroy Ansa was born in Macon,
Georgia, on November 18, 1949. After graduating
from Spelman College (1971), Ansa worked for the
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Charlotte
Observer. Since 1990 she has been a writer-in-resi-
dence at Spelman and freelance writer for maga-
zines and newspapers, including ESSENCE, Ms., and
The Los Angeles Times. In 1978, she married Jone’e
Ansa, a filmmaker. They reside in St. Simons Is-
land, Georgia, and have one daughter.
Though she has written in several genres, Ansa
is best known for her fiction, which is set in the
southern fictional town of Mulberry, Georgia. Her
first novel, Baby of the Family (1989), is the com-
ing-of-age story of Lena McPherson. Born with
a caul—a veil left by the membrane of the amni-
otic sac, which, according to folk belief, endows
its owner with second sight—Lena is able to see
and communicate with ghosts. Familiar with this
folk belief, the delivery nurse gives Lena’s mother,Ansa, Tina McElroy 17