The conceit of the letter and the oddly intimate tone toward “Jimmy” make this a curious work, but it’s often insightful and...
A celebration of James Baldwin’s literature and legacy published in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of his death.
Written as an open letter to the late author and initially published in France in 2007, this book has been classified by the publisher as “literary memoir,” but it functions more as an elliptical biography. Like his literary idol, Mabanckou (French Literature/UCLA; Broken Glass, 2010, etc.) is an émigré to Paris and has spent plenty of time in the United States. But since he is an African, he brings a different perspective to themes of literary exile, race relations and the African diaspora than have Baldwin’s biographers (whom he cites liberally). He’s particularly incisive on the relationship between Baldwin and the stepfather who was much older than his mother, as Baldwin wrestled with issues of identity from childhood. His stepfather hated “white demons” and their culture with a virulence that the boy didn’t share and also instilled a harsh religiosity that his stepson would also reject. Yet James was himself “preaching from the age of fourteen,” and it was there that he became “aware of the power of the word,” with the biblical resonance that would inform so much of Baldwin’s work. Moving to France and openly acknowledging his homosexuality reinforced Baldwin’s sense of otherness, and he rebelled against such literary patriarchs as Richard Wright. “[I]dols are created in order to be destroyed,” he wrote of his rift with Wright. He also found himself at odds with the Black Power militants of the 1960s, with Eldridge Cleaver condemning him for “the most agonizing, complete hatred for Blacks.” Yet the novelist’s influence endures, and his imprint is even stronger in France, writes Mabanckou, who declares, “[i]f you return to this world, Jimmy, you will judge your homeland even more severely than you did when you were alive.”
The conceit of the letter and the oddly intimate tone toward “Jimmy” make this a curious work, but it’s often insightful and illuminating.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1593766016
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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