Another Country

Meshell Ndegeocello: Another Country, Baldwin’s third novel, published in 1962, focuses on the aftermath of the suicide of jazz drummer Rufus Scott. Baldwin told the New York Times Book Review that he tried to write the way jazz musicians sound, citing Miles Davis and Ray Charles as artists who “are telling us something about what it is like to be alive,” resulting not in self-pity but compassion.

Another Country examines the psychological impact of racism and explores homosexuality, bisexuality, interracial relationships, abuse, and grief. Although it was challenged with accusations of obscenity, it became a bestseller. Baldwin said that the book “scared people because most don’t understand it.”

In this selection from the novel, read by Baldwin himself, Reverend Foster delivers the eulogy at Rufus’s funeral, acknowledging the good and bad in a complicated person.

James Baldwin: “I ain’t going to stand here and tell you all a whole lot of lies about Rufus. I don’t believe in that. I used to know Rufus, I knew him all his life. He was a bright kid and he was full of the devil and weren’t no way in the world of keeping up with him. He got in a lot of trouble, all of you know that. A lot of our boys get in a lot of trouble and some of you know why. We used to talk about it sometimes, him and me—we was always pretty good friends, Rufus and me, even after he jumped up and ran off from here and even though he didn’t never attend church service like I—we—always wanted him to. He had to go his way. He had his trouble and he’s gone. He was young, he was bright, he was beautiful, we expected great things from him—but he’s gone away from us now and it’s us will have to make the great things happen.”