It isn't hard to see why James Baldwin in particular has chosen to shape his sixth novel along the lines of a saga in the contemporary mode. His fiction has often been attacked, notably by younger black writers in the 1960's, as too personal, too patently a working-out of inner conflict at the price of distorting the realities of race and racial conflict in America….

It may well be that "Just Above My Head" is Baldwin's attempt to answer such criticism. The novel takes in 30 years in the lives of a group of friends, who start out preaching and singing in Harlem churches, survive (or do not survive) incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame…. (p. 3)

From this account, one would guess that "Just Above My Head" would be sprawling, hellish, joyous, as well as thick with political, economic and social...