Despite the novel’s richly explored Parisian setting and European characters, Giovanni’s Room is, punctuated with deeply American attitudes and issues. By choosing an American for the protagonist and narrator, David, James Baldwin crafts a novel that is as much about the difficult relationship between Europe and the USA as it is about the difficult relationship between David and Giovanni. Through analysis of the biased, first-person narration of the novel, as well as the dynamics between characters of French, Italian, Belgian and American ancestry, we can establish and support the argument that Giovanni’s Room is a novel that is heavily invested in the question of whether America’s relationship with Europe in the mid-20th Century is too splintered…