Letter to Jimmy (14 page)

Every time I look again at “my” photo, my eyes linger on the wrinkles of Baldwin's face. They are furrows, footpaths I have to follow in order to make my way to the clearing where I might hear his voice, where he might share with me at last the secrets he did not reveal during
his lifetime. His smile is faint, and changes as often as I try to describe it. But his eyes, most of all! “Those big eyes—prominent on your face, that once mocked your father, unaware that they would later peer into souls, or that they would pierce through the darkest part of humanity, before closing forever—still hold their power to search deeply, even from the next life,” I would write, at the beginning of my
Letter to Jimmy
. . .

I situate Baldwin's novel
Giovanni's Room
at the peak of his creative production, and
The Fire Next Time
at the height of his thought as a champion of civil rights. With it, Baldwin changed my previous understanding of the world. After reading
The Fire Next Time
, you can no longer look at society in the same way. What, after all, does Baldwin teach us if not that desperation, internal agony and “the unbearable lightness of being” haunt all races? From there, the writer must invent—or even reinvent—a universe in which neighborly love is our only salvation, since none of us can hide from the inevitable truth: “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.” Baldwin based his dream on the redemption of human nature, on reclaiming what we lost a long time ago: the beauty of life. When all is said and done, what can inspire us more than these words? “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all
the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.”

Alain Mabanckou

endnotes

  
1
.
    
James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time” in
Collected Essays of James Baldwin
, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 334-5.

  
2
.
    
Ibid., 334-5.

  
3
.
    
Ibid., 334-5.

  
4
.
    
James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” in
Collected Essays of James Baldwin
, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 42.

  
5
.
    
Ibid., 42.

  
6
.
    
James Baldwin,
Conversations with James Baldwin
, eds. Fred Standley and Louis H. Pratt (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 77-78.

  
7
.
    
Ibid., 199.

  
8
.
    
David Leeming,
James Baldwin: A Biography
(New York: Knopf, Distributed by Random House, 1994), 3.

  
9
.
    
Benoît Depardieu,
James Baldwin
(Paris: Belin, 2004), 20-21.

  
10
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 13.

  
11
.
  
Ibid., p. 68.

  
14
.
  
Ibid., 161.

  
15
.
  
James Campbell,
Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin
(New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 10.

  
16
.
  
Ibid., p. 40.

  
17
.
  
Ibid., p. 37.

  
18
.
  
Ibid., p. 38.

  
19
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 9.

  
20
.
  
“The Fire Next Time,” op. cit., 307.

  
21
.
  
Ibid., 309.

  
22
.
  
Ibid., 307.

  
23
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 75.

  
24
.
  
Ibid, 64.

  
25
.
  
“The Fire Next Time,” op. cit., 291.

  
26
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 66.

  
27
.
  
Depardieu, op. cit., p. 17.

  
28
.
  
Leeming, op. cit., 17.

  
29
.
  
“The Fire Next Time,” op. cit., 327.

  
30
.
  
Ibid., p. 14.

  
31
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 6.

  
32
.
  
Michel Fabre,
La Rive noire: les écrivains noirs américains à Paris, 1830-1995
(Marseille: André Dimanche, 1999), 71.

  
33
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 9.

  
34
.
  
Robert Coles, “James Baldwin Back Home,”
New York Times
, July 31, 1977.

  
35
.
  
Ibid.

  
36
.
  
James Campbell,
Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 24.

  
37
.
  
Hazel Rowley,
Richard Wright: The Life and Times
(New York: Henry Holt, 2003).

  
38
.
  
James Baldwin, “Nobody Knows My Name” in
Collected Essays of James Baldwin
, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 259.

  
39
.
  
Leeming, op. cit., 49.

  
40
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 5.

  
41
.
  
Leeming, op. cit., 52-53.

  
42
.
  
Campbell,
Exiled in Paris
, op. cit., 24.

  
43
.
  
Benoît Depardieu, op. cit., 28–29 (quotation drawn from “Nobody Knows My Name” and translated into French by Benoît Depardieu in his book. The exact source of Depardieu's original English citation of Baldwin's work is unclear).

  
44
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 11-18.

  
45
.
  
Ibid., p. 20.

  
46
.
  
Amanda Claybaugh, Introduction and Notes to
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
by Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003), xxxvi.

  
47
.
  
Notes of a Native Son
, op. cit., 12.

  
48
.
  
Depardieu, op. cit., 80.

  
49
.
  
Claybaugh, op. cit., xiv–xv.

  
50
.
  
Ibid., xviii.

  
51
.
  
Notes of a Native Son
, op. cit., 16.

  
52
.
  
Ibid., p. 23-24.

  
53
.
  
Claybaugh, op. cit., xxxii.

  
54
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 19-35.

  
55
.
  
Ibid., 30.

  
56
.
  
Ibid., 27.

  
57
.
  
Ibid., 27.

  
58
.
  
Campbell,
Exiled in Paris
, op. cit., 31.

  
59
.
  
Collected Essays
, op. cit., p. 258.

  
60
.
  
Ibid., p. 260.

  
61
.
  
Langston Hughes, review of
Notes of a Native Son
, by James Baldwin,
New York Times
, February 26, 1958.

  
62
.
  
Campbell,
Exiled in Paris
, op. cit., 29.

  
63
.
  
Camara Laye,
L'Enfant noir
(Paris: Plon, 1954). New Plon 2006 edition with preface by the author, Alain Mabanckou.

  
64
.
  
Eza Boto,
Ville cruelle
(Paris: Présence africaine, 1954);
Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba
(Paris: Présence africaine, 1956).

  
65
.
  
Aimé Césaire,
Cahier d'un retour au pays natal
(Paris: Présence africaine, 1983).

  
66
.
  
Mongo Beti, “Enfant noir,”
Présence Africaine
, 1954.

  
67
.
  
Lilyan Kesteloot,
Anthologie négro-africaine : panorama critique des prosateurs, poètes et dramaturges noirs du XXe siècle
(Vanves: Edicef, 1987).

  
68
.
  
Simon Njami,
James Baldwin, ou, Le devoir de violence
(Paris: Seghers, 1991).

  
69
.
  
Campbell,
Talking at the Gates
, op. cit., 71.

  
70
.
  
Dwight A. McBride, “The Parvenu Baldwin and the Other Side of Redemption,” in
James Baldwin Now
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), 234.

  
71
.
  
Collected Essays,
op. cit., p. 594-600.

  
72
.
  
Ibid., p. 597.

  
73
.
  
Ibid., p. 597.

  
74
.
  
James Baldwin, “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,”
Playboy
, January 1985, reproduced in
Collected Essays
, op. cit., 814-829.

  
75
.
  
Collected Essays
, op. cit., p. 814.

  
76
.
  
Ibid., p. 815.

  
77
.
  
Faggot, a derogatory term for a homosexual man used at the time, which Wright himself would use against Baldwin.

  
78
.
  
Collected Essays
, op. cit., p. 821.

  
79
.
  
Ibid., p. 820.

  
80
.
  
Campbell,
Exiled in Paris
, op. cit., 33.

  
81
.
  
Eldridge Cleaver,
Soul on Ice
(New York: Delta, 1999), 124. First edition published in 1967 by McGraw Hill, New York.

  
82
.
  
Paul Goodman, “Not Enough of a World to Grow in,”
New York Times
, June 24, 1962.

  
83
.
  
Depardieu, op. cit., 80.

  
84
.
  
James Baldwin,
Another Country
(New York: Random House, 2013), p. 22.

  
85
.
  
Ibid., p. 27.

  
87
.
  
“Notes of a Native Son,” op. cit., 42.

  
88
.
  
Ibid., 86.

  
89
.
  
Dominic Thomas,
Black France: colonialism, immigration, and transnationalism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 10.