Thanks for listening to Bookworm. I'm host Michael Silverblatt. If there's another podcast that comes from us at KCRW that I really like is the treatment with Elvis Mitchell. I've said it for a long time. Elvis's style of interviewing is like jazz. He orchestrates so many interesting moments and gets people to say such surprising

and interesting things about film, about popular culture. He really knows his subject,

and he's one of the very best in the country. Listen to the treatment.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, and to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without good news into the bird? It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I received a book in the mail called Letter to Jimmy.

It's a book-length letter to James Baldwin.

It's by the Congolese writer Alain Mabanku, who, as it happens, teaches both African literature

and French literature here in Los Angeles at UCLA. This seems to me to be, well, destined, because the letter to Jimmy, published by Soft Skull Press,

led me to reread James Baldwin, particularly the essays, and there could be no better time

than to reread Baldwin right now, especially the fire next time and no name in the street.

These are masterpieces, And they are full of foresight

about what is going on with black people in America still today. Now my guest, Alain Mabanku, is the author. Now there have been, I believe,

seven books translated into English. He's written many novels in French. The Congo was a colony of France, and so you grew up speaking French.

French was the language you were taught in school, yes?

Yes. French is the language spoken in the streets, in the offices, and so on.

...