Letter to Jimmy: On the Twentieth Anniversary of Your Death by Alain Mabanckou

Abstract

but loving any great writer. The passion is the point; the love-object author is incidental , subject to taste. B & Me is a great love letter to literature itself; it is a reminder that the writer’s job is to push further with each generation, to help reorient our moral compass, and take back criticism from the critics and give it back to the people. Jason Christian Oklahoma State University Adrianne Kalfopoulou. Ruin: Essays in Exilic Living. Pasadena, California. Red Hen Press. 2014. isbn 9781597095372 Adrianne Kalfopoulou, poet, professor, and Plathian scholar, currently lives and teaches in Athens, Greece, but has taught in the International Summer Schools Program at the University of Edinburgh and is part of the adjunct faculty in the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Kalfopoulou ’s latest work, Ruin: Essays in Exilic Living, documents her life as she travels from Edinburgh to New York, Freiburg, then back home to Athens. In Ruin, readers become part of the “camaraderie of travelers”—enthusiastically sightseeing or nervously broaching global politics with strangers. The collection uses sharp, lyrical prose to ruminate on issues of motherhood and language, power and protests. In “April, the Cruelest,” Kalfopoulou visits her daughter, Kore, who is writing a paper on T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Kore argues April is cruel because Demeter knows Persephone willhavetogobacktoHadessoon.Kalfopoulou responds, “I am suddenly nodding with tears in my eyes, since this is the reality of me being in the city this April, me from Athens, and she in her New York urban world; she who will remain here when I return.” Kalfopoulou’s application of Greek myth to the personal mirrors her ability throughout the collection to juxtapose heady theorists with coffee-shop chatter. Within the same April chapter, Kalfopoulou meshes the academic with the banal, referencing a New York Times article, poetry from Mahmoud Darwish, the earlytwentieth -century history of Greece, and conversations overheard on NJ Transit. The last chapter of the book even includes the author’s own poems. Ruin’s readability also stems from the weaving of the personal with the political . Kalfopoulou reports on issues of safety in a post-9/11 world, the social unrest in Athens and New York, and the economic crisis: “Before a pathesi [or trauma], there is no need to think about the problem; the country’s trauma has unmasked the larger pathology of a global economy, unsettling the seemingly settled.” The collection offers intimate knowledge of modern Greece, painting a picture of its streets, sound, and smells (even if not pleasant, especially when illustrating the garbage strike). Kalfopoulou analyzes Greece’s former prime minister, George Papandreou , and his words as insightfully as she does graffiti on the walls or the homeless in the streets. The experience of Ruin is encapsulated in one line: “I am strangely freed in this city, perhaps because my eventual leaving allows for more acute desire.” One can easily replace “city” with “book” here—this hybrid work, combining poetry, journalism, and memoir, leaves us all wanting more. Melissa Adamo Rutgers University—Newark Alain Mabanckou. Letter to Jimmy: On the Twentieth Anniversary of Your Death. Sara Meli Ansari, tr. Berkeley, California. Soft Skull Press / Counterpoint. 2014. isbn 9781593766016 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 A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction Valerie Miles, ed. Open Letter Twenty-eight eminent Spanish-language writers identify their best work for inclusion in this anthology. Coupled with a short biographical note and an interview with the authors themselves, the pieces chosen reveal personal insights into the writing process. This tribute to the twentieth century will beckon readers for years to come. Kirsten Thorup The God of Chance Janet Garton, tr. Norvik Press / Dufour Kirsten Thorup’s novel focuses on a Danish businesswoman who takes a girl from Gambia to Europe in order to receive an education. Culture shock, an intense fixation by the Danish woman toward her charge, the struggle for learning, and a dependence on chance all combine with rich imagery into a story about two women and their search...