If Beale Street Could Talk: Setting 1 key example

Fonny lives in Greenwich Village in a dingy apartment in what was, then, generally a poorer neighborhood and the center of the growth of counterculture. Tish also regularly visits "the Tombs," where Fonny is imprisoned, a now-demolished prison complex in Lower Manhattan, officially known as the Manhattan Detention Complex. The prison building was large, made of dark brick, and imposing, hence its nickname. Tish describes its interior as vast, off-putting, and terrifying. She despises going there other than to see Fonny. (Note that the novel is not set on the titular Beale Street. There is no street with that name in New York; the novel is named after the "Beale Street Blues," a blues standard from the 1920s, which itself is named after Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, a hub of Black music in the city.) Sharon also makes a visit to Puerto Rico, which is described as being underdeveloped and full of slums. Sharon first visits a loud and raucous nightclub before finding Victoria Rogers at her small home. Other than this trip, no one in the novel leaves New York.

The temporal setting of the novel is probably around the time when it was written, in the early 1970s. But it is important to note that the story could have taken place as early as the 1940s or 50s. No one in the novel mentions important societal changes from the 1960s for African Americans, like the legislative advances of the civil rights movement or the hope and collective strength of Black Power. In other words, the story was written intentionally to seem somewhat dated in the 1970s. The strict social mores of Mrs. Hunt and her daughters, in particular, seem like relics of an earlier era than the one in which Baldwin wrote.