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Lettre à Jimmy
Written on the twentieth anniversary of James Baldwin s death, Letter to Jimmy is African writer Alain Mabanckou s ode to his literary hero and an effort to place Baldwin s life in context within the greater African diaspora.
Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along a Santa Monica beacha man whose ragged clothes and unsteady gait remind the author of a character out of one of James Baldwin s novels Mabanckou uses his own experiences as an African living in the US as a launching pad to take readers on a fascinating tour of James Baldwin s life. As Mabanckou reads Baldwin s work, looks at pictures of him through the years, and explores Baldwin s checkered publishing history, he is always probing for answers about what it must have been like for the young Baldwin to live abroad as an African-American, to write obliquely about his own homosexuality, and to seek out mentors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison only to publicly reject them
later.
As Mabanckou travels to Paris, reads about French history and engages with contemporary readers, his letters to Baldwin grow more intimate and personal. He speaks to Baldwin as a peera writer who paved the way for his own work, and Mabanckou seems to believe, someone who might understand his experiences as an African expatriate.
"
Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along a Santa Monica beacha man whose ragged clothes and unsteady gait remind the author of a character out of one of James Baldwin s novels Mabanckou uses his own experiences as an African living in the US as a launching pad to take readers on a fascinating tour of James Baldwin s life. As Mabanckou reads Baldwin s work, looks at pictures of him through the years, and explores Baldwin s checkered publishing history, he is always probing for answers about what it must have been like for the young Baldwin to live abroad as an African-American, to write obliquely about his own homosexuality, and to seek out mentors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison only to publicly reject them
later.
As Mabanckou travels to Paris, reads about French history and engages with contemporary readers, his letters to Baldwin grow more intimate and personal. He speaks to Baldwin as a peera writer who paved the way for his own work, and Mabanckou seems to believe, someone who might understand his experiences as an African expatriate.
"
188 pages, Paperback
First published August 16, 2007
4 people are currently reading
413 people want to read
About the author
Alain Mabanckou
87 books461 followersAlain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo-Brazzaville (French Congo). He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA, having previously spent four years at the University of Michigan. Mabanckou will be a Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University in 2007-2008. One of Francophone Africa's most prolific contemporary writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He received the Sub-Saharan Africa Literary Prize in 1999 for his first novel, Blue-White-Red, the Prize of the Five Francophone Continents for Broken Glass, and the Prix Renaudot in 2006 for Memoirs of a Porcupine. He was selected by the French publishing trade journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for in the coming century. His most recent book is African Psycho.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 6, 2016
"People would argue for a long time about the real reasons behind your "exile" in France. But the truth is that there is nothing more disheartening than the imprisonment of a creative person, nothing worse than the feeling that the world collapsing before you will swallow your dreams in the end."- Alain Mabanckou, Letter to Jimmy
I feel this book is many things at once: it's a sort of biography, a homage to a great writer, and at the same time it's a sort of guide to the search for one's inner self through the works of someone who has clearly influenced us. It was a beautiful recapitulation of James Baldwin's life by someone who is clearly a great admirer and knows a lot about him. At times Mabanckou is speaking to James Baldwin, at other times he is addressing us, the reader, filling the gaps in our knowledge and giving us interesting tidbits and interspersing the book with book reviews.
To me, the title of the book illustrates a closeness between the writer and James Baldwin, and it's no surprise the admiration and reverence Mabanckou feels to Baldwin because I, and so many others, feel it too. An enigmatic individual, insightful, brave enough to take his life into his own hands, eloquent enough to dissect and present the race problem in an accessible and very incisive way.One of the chapters is entitled "black. bastard. gay and a writer", I believe the first three words basically sum up the complexity of his identity, especially in the era in which he lived, and yet he managed to become one of the best writers of the 20th Century despite so many obstacles.
I also like that Mabanckou talks about how Baldwin's words are needed, even now (or maybe especially now); he means so much to marginalized folk and also people searching for their own identities, and so many of his words are timeless and are still very relevant to this day. He has a lot to teach all of us:
"At a young age, we end up accepting what is said about us, especially when it comes from adults. It remains this way until something comes along to contradict those early notions, to make things right, even if only superficially."
Since I recently reread Baldwin's own essay on sentimentalism, I thought it was interesting that Mabanckou seems to have the same, or similar, ideas about African literature. It surprised me to see that parallel but Mabanckou makes a pretty good argument, I'd say:
"A variety of African literature known as "child soldier" literature-- or as "Rwandan genocide" literature, when it was created more in protest than in an effort to truly understand the tragedies-- convinced me definitively that we were not yet free of the vortex of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and that the sentimentality and moralizing current that runs through some of these works does harm to African literature."
All through this read I was thinking about how our favourite author influences us and plays the role of guide in our journey. Regardless of the gender, ethnicity, era, country of origin, etc, writers can reach out to so many people, just like Baldwin clearly reached out to Mabanckou.
I feel this book is many things at once: it's a sort of biography, a homage to a great writer, and at the same time it's a sort of guide to the search for one's inner self through the works of someone who has clearly influenced us. It was a beautiful recapitulation of James Baldwin's life by someone who is clearly a great admirer and knows a lot about him. At times Mabanckou is speaking to James Baldwin, at other times he is addressing us, the reader, filling the gaps in our knowledge and giving us interesting tidbits and interspersing the book with book reviews.
To me, the title of the book illustrates a closeness between the writer and James Baldwin, and it's no surprise the admiration and reverence Mabanckou feels to Baldwin because I, and so many others, feel it too. An enigmatic individual, insightful, brave enough to take his life into his own hands, eloquent enough to dissect and present the race problem in an accessible and very incisive way.One of the chapters is entitled "black. bastard. gay and a writer", I believe the first three words basically sum up the complexity of his identity, especially in the era in which he lived, and yet he managed to become one of the best writers of the 20th Century despite so many obstacles.
I also like that Mabanckou talks about how Baldwin's words are needed, even now (or maybe especially now); he means so much to marginalized folk and also people searching for their own identities, and so many of his words are timeless and are still very relevant to this day. He has a lot to teach all of us:
"At a young age, we end up accepting what is said about us, especially when it comes from adults. It remains this way until something comes along to contradict those early notions, to make things right, even if only superficially."
Since I recently reread Baldwin's own essay on sentimentalism, I thought it was interesting that Mabanckou seems to have the same, or similar, ideas about African literature. It surprised me to see that parallel but Mabanckou makes a pretty good argument, I'd say:
"A variety of African literature known as "child soldier" literature-- or as "Rwandan genocide" literature, when it was created more in protest than in an effort to truly understand the tragedies-- convinced me definitively that we were not yet free of the vortex of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and that the sentimentality and moralizing current that runs through some of these works does harm to African literature."
All through this read I was thinking about how our favourite author influences us and plays the role of guide in our journey. Regardless of the gender, ethnicity, era, country of origin, etc, writers can reach out to so many people, just like Baldwin clearly reached out to Mabanckou.
February 3, 2019
J'ai écrémé ceci pour un essai, alors j'ai lu des extraits, pas le livre en entier. D'après ce que j'ai lu, je n'ai pas été impressionné, mais cela couvrait des sujets sensibles. C'est essentiellement une biographie de James Baldwin, qui Mabanckou admire. Ce livre couvre également des thèmes tels que le racisme et l'homophobie en Amérique.
Traduit en anglais:
I skimmed this for an essay, so I read snippets, not the entire book. From what I read, I wasn't impressed, but it did cover sensitive subjects. It's essentially a biography of James Baldwin, who Mabanckou admires. This book also covers themes such as racism and homophobia in America.
Traduit en anglais:
I skimmed this for an essay, so I read snippets, not the entire book. From what I read, I wasn't impressed, but it did cover sensitive subjects. It's essentially a biography of James Baldwin, who Mabanckou admires. This book also covers themes such as racism and homophobia in America.
Read
December 2, 2020▫️LETTER TO JIMMY by Alain Mabanckou, translated from the French by Sara Meli Ansari 2007/2014 by @softskullpress
.
#ReadtheWorld21 📍Republic of Congo
.
"Far from being alienated from himself, an African man does not harbor the same fear of rootlessness as an American man of color, even though he has endured history's injustice, and unlike an American man of color, has not 'all his life long, ached for acceptance I'm a culture which pronounced straight hair and white skin the only acceptable beauty.'
.
A biography and homage in the form of a letter, from Congolese writer Mabanckou to his literary idol, James Baldwin. Quoting Baldwin's own words in the above quote (from "Notes of a Native Son"), the book is a series of essays/letters that intereave Baldwin's biography with brief notes on the African and Black French context of his work - several times Mabanckou refers to France as "our adopted country", as both writers spent significant time in Paris.
While all of the letter/essays were splendidly done (I read this book in one night... More on that in a minute...) the one that really stood out to me was entitled "Between the [B]lack American and the African: Misunderstanding". Mabanckou explores expatriate life, something he and Jimmy both knew, but in different contexts in France, and the US.
"...while Africans are naturally attached to Africa, [B]lack Americans for their part mytholgize it, spin legends about it, dream of it as a promised land... Their Africa, as a result, a kind of 'dreamland'."
There's some great highlights about Baldwin's public discourse with Fanon, Malcolm X, Césaire, Morrison, and Sartre, and discussion of many (all?) of Baldwin's works.
▪️This book, was written by Mabanckou on the 20th anniversary of Baldwin's death in 2007 (translated 7 years later). It was not until the final pages, when Mabanckou speaks about his passing did I realize that I was reading the book *exactly* 33 years after his death on December 1st, 1987.
.
#ReadtheWorld21 📍Republic of Congo
.
"Far from being alienated from himself, an African man does not harbor the same fear of rootlessness as an American man of color, even though he has endured history's injustice, and unlike an American man of color, has not 'all his life long, ached for acceptance I'm a culture which pronounced straight hair and white skin the only acceptable beauty.'
.
A biography and homage in the form of a letter, from Congolese writer Mabanckou to his literary idol, James Baldwin. Quoting Baldwin's own words in the above quote (from "Notes of a Native Son"), the book is a series of essays/letters that intereave Baldwin's biography with brief notes on the African and Black French context of his work - several times Mabanckou refers to France as "our adopted country", as both writers spent significant time in Paris.
While all of the letter/essays were splendidly done (I read this book in one night... More on that in a minute...) the one that really stood out to me was entitled "Between the [B]lack American and the African: Misunderstanding". Mabanckou explores expatriate life, something he and Jimmy both knew, but in different contexts in France, and the US.
"...while Africans are naturally attached to Africa, [B]lack Americans for their part mytholgize it, spin legends about it, dream of it as a promised land... Their Africa, as a result, a kind of 'dreamland'."
There's some great highlights about Baldwin's public discourse with Fanon, Malcolm X, Césaire, Morrison, and Sartre, and discussion of many (all?) of Baldwin's works.
▪️This book, was written by Mabanckou on the 20th anniversary of Baldwin's death in 2007 (translated 7 years later). It was not until the final pages, when Mabanckou speaks about his passing did I realize that I was reading the book *exactly* 33 years after his death on December 1st, 1987.
Read
March 10, 2015"In Letter to Jimmy, Alain Mabanckou gives a heartfelt tribute to James Baldwin. Gazing at Baldwin’s black-and-white picture, the author’s mind wanders and takes us into Baldwin’s life and peregrinations." - Rokiatou Soumaré, University of Oklahoma
This book was reviewed in the March 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/1Br9lTZ
This book was reviewed in the March 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/1Br9lTZ
June 23, 2020
Noir, bâtard, homosexuel, écrivain, James Baldwin a combattu sans relâche la ségrégation raciale. Alain Mabanckou lui adresse ici une longue lettre post-mortem où il salue son esprit libre qui refusa que sa lutte mène au repli communautaire...
June 18, 2015
A lovely book with wonderful translation!
November 2, 2025
I confess I'm not sure why this exists. If anything, I was predisposed to like it—I have a fascination with and admiration for James Baldwin, so putting his life and work in conversation with Mabanckou's own wheelhouse of Black Francophone post-colonial literature seemed a great idea. But that's not really what this is.
Letter to Jimmy is, for the most part, a condensed biography of James Baldwin, arbitrarily organized and with some literary criticism—by other people—tossed in. I can't understand why it's formatted as a letter to Baldwin since most of it is just summarizing the facts of his life and career. Moreover, Mabanckou focuses mostly on Baldwin's nonfiction work, only touching briefly on the critical reception of his novels and not even once mentioning Another Country, which is (in my opinion) his masterpiece!
I wish there was more close reading of Baldwin here, and that Mabanckou wasn't as hesitant to bring in his own experiences. This could work as a braided memoir/literary criticism/biography. But, again... that's not what it is.
I had initially intended for this to be the book I read for the Republic of the Congo but I'm going to try one of Alain Mabanckou's other books instead.
Letter to Jimmy is, for the most part, a condensed biography of James Baldwin, arbitrarily organized and with some literary criticism—by other people—tossed in. I can't understand why it's formatted as a letter to Baldwin since most of it is just summarizing the facts of his life and career. Moreover, Mabanckou focuses mostly on Baldwin's nonfiction work, only touching briefly on the critical reception of his novels and not even once mentioning Another Country, which is (in my opinion) his masterpiece!
I wish there was more close reading of Baldwin here, and that Mabanckou wasn't as hesitant to bring in his own experiences. This could work as a braided memoir/literary criticism/biography. But, again... that's not what it is.
I had initially intended for this to be the book I read for the Republic of the Congo but I'm going to try one of Alain Mabanckou's other books instead.
March 23, 2024
Just a great book, I especially like the parts on David Baldwin his wanting for divine retribution, hate, rage and indignation: His outrage to seeks justice, expecting the other to restore the damage done.
A rejection of the others false innocents, to turn themselves into the ''real victims'' as James Baldwin once said. False innocence: for the other (white Americans) to deny responsibility, culpable or complicit is to wrongly assume the self is detachable from its social and historical roles and statuses- ego is thier victimhood (the ego is concerned only with itself and finds significance
only in what it can represent.)
David Baldwin hatred of James Baldwin, the author describes a vid flashback were by James Baldwin looks back to moments of his step fathers kindness and is thrashed back to a violent reality of a cruel step father .
(David Baldwin was once a devoted and loving step father managing the best he could for his family. Though to me, These acts were not chinks of warm humanity in his amour of coldness and cruelty, but parts of the same protective attitude that made him hateful and violent to his children.)
A thought provoking book and very well written as of writing this review its my favorite book to date
A rejection of the others false innocents, to turn themselves into the ''real victims'' as James Baldwin once said. False innocence: for the other (white Americans) to deny responsibility, culpable or complicit is to wrongly assume the self is detachable from its social and historical roles and statuses- ego is thier victimhood (the ego is concerned only with itself and finds significance
only in what it can represent.)
David Baldwin hatred of James Baldwin, the author describes a vid flashback were by James Baldwin looks back to moments of his step fathers kindness and is thrashed back to a violent reality of a cruel step father .
(David Baldwin was once a devoted and loving step father managing the best he could for his family. Though to me, These acts were not chinks of warm humanity in his amour of coldness and cruelty, but parts of the same protective attitude that made him hateful and violent to his children.)
A thought provoking book and very well written as of writing this review its my favorite book to date
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2019
There are very few people who can write about James Arthur Baldwin in a way that encapsulates all that he was and represents. Alain - in this book - does a marvelous job writing about the phenom that is Jimmy. Alain traces Baldwin’s life through his work and does a remarkable job. He writes about Baldwin in all his complexities and nuances. He writes about Baldwin in his native country as well as his country of refuge: France.
He writes about Baldwin’s relationship with his mentor Richard Wright. Through this work, we see Baldwin from Harlem to Saint-Paul-de-Vince. This book is a great tribute and love Letter to one of the greatest essayist to have ever lived.
This book was glorious. I literally couldn’t put it down.
He writes about Baldwin’s relationship with his mentor Richard Wright. Through this work, we see Baldwin from Harlem to Saint-Paul-de-Vince. This book is a great tribute and love Letter to one of the greatest essayist to have ever lived.
This book was glorious. I literally couldn’t put it down.
January 13, 2018
This books is genuine, sincere yet deep in wit, intellect and style.
This book really illuminated the slight intellectual tiff between Baldwin and Wright. Mabanckou shows the great amount of nuance in Baldwin's writings and how prophetic and yet of his time he was. The postscript seems to point to Baldwin as a stronger essayist than novelist. His later novels aren't even mentioned in this book beyond a sentence
This book really illuminated the slight intellectual tiff between Baldwin and Wright. Mabanckou shows the great amount of nuance in Baldwin's writings and how prophetic and yet of his time he was. The postscript seems to point to Baldwin as a stronger essayist than novelist. His later novels aren't even mentioned in this book beyond a sentence
August 17, 2025
Chapter 6, and to a lesser extent Chapters 8 and 10, was the chapter that I thought the whole book would be like, putting Baldwin in the context of a worldwide black experience including African nations like Mabanckou's Congo. Instead the book was mainly biographical.
July 15, 2020
The format is a bit contrived at times but once you accept it windows to the great James Baldwin open and you are left with a desire to know the man and his writing better.
March 21, 2024
A unique way of presenting a biography, while dealing with the themes, context and subtext of Baldwin's writing.
If it was presented as a dissertation, I would grade it A+.
If it was presented as a dissertation, I would grade it A+.
September 6, 2020
Read my thoughts here:
https://bookaroundthecorner.com/2020/...
https://bookaroundthecorner.com/2020/...
February 22, 2016
a great reminder of the genius of Baldwin and how his words can still touch those struggling with identity and place
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews