In 1988 at age 22, novelist Alain Mabanckou (Broken Glass) left his native Republic of the Congo for Paris. Today he also makes his home in Santa Monica, Calif., and teaches French literature at UCLA. On a parallel path in 1948, the black, openly homosexual novelist and playwright James Baldwin left his native New York City at age 24, bound for Paris and an expatriate French life. Letter to Jimmy is Mabanckou's homage to his literary mentor, written in 2007, on the 20th anniversary of Baldwin's death.
Mabanckou's focus is not biographical; rather, it is on his own search within Baldwin's life and work for better understanding of the roles race, expatriation and social isolation play in the writing of a modern black man. In this exploration, he latches on to Baldwin's insistence that literature must be more than protest when he criticized the work of black intellectual giants like Richard Wright and Malcolm X. Mabanckou applies this conclusion to his own struggle with "child soldier" or "Rwandan genocide" literature where "an African author will be able to do nothing but await the next disaster on his continent before starting a book in which he will spend more time denouncing than writing." With great admiration, he praises Baldwin for the individuality of his work in the face of social and political headwinds (one chapter title sums up Baldwin's obstacles: "black, bastard, gay and a writer"). Mabanckou should likewise be praised for raising tough questions about race and art--and exploring the answers so fearlessly. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.