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LeMonde
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
Retracing James Baldwin's footsteps in Istanbul, the city that saved his life
First, there are his hands, slender and delicate, moving slowly over a long rosary, with the slow, light movement of someone who has learned to savor every second of existence. There is a bare room, where he lies on his back in the middle of a large bed. The windows and the stool topped with a pack of cigarettes highlight a minimalist decor, white as a blank page. And then, suddenly, there is his voice, as quick as it is relentless: "I suppose that many people do blame me for being out of the States as often as I am. But one can't afford to worry about that, because one does, you know, what you have to do, the way you have to do it." James Baldwin gets up. Wearing only underwear, he lazily scratches his back and opens the curtains before the camera's eye glides over the Bosphorus, following the boats crossing between the European and Asian shores of the vast city of Istanbul, which is just waking up. This footage, from the 11-minute black-and-white documentary James Baldwin: From Another Place, directed by Turkish photographer Sedat Pakay, was shot in May 1970. Until two years ago, it was impossible to find – except for a brief excerpt on YouTube – and it reveals one of the most important and creative, yet still relatively unknown, periods in the North American writer's career. At the time the film was made, Baldwin was 45 years old and at the height of his powers. Known for his incisive and often dazzling writing, recognized as one of the most important authors of his era, an openly gay man and pioneer for gay rights, as well as a leading voice of the civil rights movement, he had been living in Istanbul intermittently for nearly 10 years. That Turkish decade, filled with parties and friends, self-questioning and struggle, would come to an end a few months later, marking the beginning of a long and unique period of exile that, as he would often repeat to those close to him, "saved [his] life."
Washington Post
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers's work sometimes stings, and always sings
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was already a tenured scholar of literature and a celebrated poet when she published her debut novel, 'The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,' in 2021. It was a centuries-spanning epic of intergenerational Black Southern histories that was met with a cascade of rave reviews. The Washington Post's Ron Charles called it 'the kind of book that comes around only once a decade.' The novel arrived during a now-faded and unfinished season of racial and historical reckonings following the murder of George Floyd. Systemic injustice, long-standing monuments to white supremacy and profound inequality sparked nationwide protests and debate. The continuing backlash and counter-awakening have revealed the stubborn depths of the struggle. Now, in her first book of nonfiction, Jeffers revisits the years since 2021 through a personal lens, exploring what it means to live and heal through her experiences as a Black Southern woman, educator and artist. 'Misbehaving at the Crossroads' is a distinctive blend of memoir and criticism, a set of fearless pieces on politics, history, art and gender in the mold of her literary forebears Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. But Jeffers's book should not be confused for 'urgent' political observation in the time of Donald Trump. This is a collection forged in deeply personal pain and poetry. It's a first-person narrative about living and surviving at the intersections of self and other, Black and White, American and African, woman and men, mother and daughter. These are the crossroads at which Jeffers exists, writes and misbehaves. Though configured as an essay collection, this book functions as a great memoir, tracing an arc of unknowing beginnings, adolescent rupture, displacement, trauma — eventually arriving at a place of understanding and even catharsis. From an abusive childhood in Georgia through her literary blossoming and up to her acclaimed life in academia and publishing, Jeffers's story soars, stings and, always, sings. Music is at the heart of the project. Jeffers's background as a poet — a self-described blues poet, specifically — is in clear view across these works of mostly prose. As on any great concept album, there are short interludes, including fully italicized open letters akin to voice memos, and many deliciously melodic registers. There's rage as orchestral and ancestral chorus, the sensual softness of an R&B riff as she falls in love in Senegal, and the melancholic, sage beauty of the blues as she journeys home to Georgia to care for her dying mother. As she writes in a diary entry on her drive home to be with her mother: 'I'm thinking about this country that I love but which gives me eternal, deep disappointment. I'm thinking about the southern landscape that daily pierces me with its beauty, even while I wonder what horrors this landscape remembers.' What is most exciting about this collection is that it rarely resembles many other such books by celebrated writers. Essays are often gathered as trophy collections, bringing together discrete pieces, often previously published, with introductions that can be forced attempts to tie a unifying bow around the contents. Jeffers's collection, by contrast, does not feature a conventional introduction. It begins with a detailed family tree before leaping into Jeffers's vantage with an essay about watching the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, from her bedroom in Oklahoma: The book unfolds in a nonlinear way, clearly composed in the cauldron of these post-pandemic years of doomscrolling and splintered attention spans. Each of the short chapters flows into the next, building on themes addressed earlier, returning to previous questions with new attempts at answers and underscoring the book's larger ideas anew, as a song's chorus might. It is highly readable and, despite the sometimes painful material, entertaining. The cover art is from 'Links Together,' a lithograph by the artist and activist Elizabeth Catlett held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It is a stylish work of portraiture centering three dark-skinned women in close-up against a gold background, under a canopy of leaves, a trinity holding hands in solidarity and love. It's a beautiful image in its own right; it also captures Jeffers's mission in everything that follows. As Jeffers has said in interviews, this book is by and for Black women, designed at its core to convey their stories and celebrate, emphasize and assert their beauty, humanity and dignity. In such terms, I may not be the primary audience for 'Misbehaving at the Crossroads,' but I am deeply grateful that it invites all readers to access these most intimate human responses. The mediated effect of so much polite mainstream writing about American history, multiculturalism, sexism and racism is to offer naive bridges of understanding; earnest attempts at conversation can fail to deliver an emotional jolt and necessary truths. By eschewing such platitudes for something rooted in blunt, conversational and fearless honesty, Jeffers opens doors to those beyond her own experience. The cumulative emotional effect of this collage of short, interlocked essays, letters and poems is a term Jeffers herself used in a recent interview: big feelings. She told her interviewer that much of the injustice and violence in American life is rooted in the inability of too many in power to deal with their interior lives and unresolved emotions. Personal reckonings with trauma, inheritance and falsehoods are a necessary first step to any broader and sustainable national advancement. As Jeffers demonstrates on each page, it was through words that she found her process and her form to traverse the terrain of Black womanhood. 'Misbehaving at the Crossroads' is a brilliant testament to just how restorative the writing of one life's big feelings can be, and how equally pleasurable its reading. Bilal Qureshi is a culture writer and radio journalist. Essays & Writings By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. Harper. 352 pp. $30
New York Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Beauford Delaney's Luminous Watercolors, Color Flirts With Line
I didn't go to 'In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney' expecting to see a love story. A mentor to James Baldwin, a friend to Henry Miller and the subject of five separate Georgia O'Keeffe portraits, Delaney (1901-1979) is remembered as a prolific painter of many styles. In a career that included appearances in the Harlem Renaissance and the Greenwich Village scene, 26 years in Paris, and debilitating bouts of poverty and mental illness, he produced busy, jigsaw-puzzle street scenes that Miller called 'mad with color'; glowing, somewhat sentimental portraits; and a broad range of colorful abstractions. Like Baldwin, Delaney was the gay Black son of a preacher, in Delaney's case one who traveled around the south from a base in Knoxville, Tenn. After studying art in Boston, with the help of an older painter, he made his way to New York, where he was robbed twice on his first night but determined to stay. There he made loving, slightly fantastical portraits of friends, acquaintances and important Black cultural figures. But though he drew them with confidence and care, you can see him yearning to ornament and exalt his subjects rather than just transcribe them. The 81 works and eight original sketchbooks in this extremely beguiling show demonstrate that whatever was happening elsewhere in his life, the pulsing heart of Delaney's work was the intimate, tantalizing, constantly deferred flirtation of color and line — something on clearest display in his drawings. There's plenty of background information in the wall labels and catalog essays, but the emphasis here isn't on biography or even on art historical argument, which is all to the good. It leaves more room to follow what's actually happening on the paper. Start with the line. Its confidence is unwavering, from the 1964 self-portrait in oil that opens the show to the pair of stunning self-portraits in ink on the second gallery's back wall. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
National Geographic
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
How Black culture has shaped Paris—and where to experience it
Creative Black minds and artisans have been present in Paris's renowned art and food scene since the 1920s. American writers like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin found a home in the city's bustling jazz cafes, and their future works have laid the foundation for Black American literature. In addition to literary legends, tens of thousands of families of African origin reside in Paris, specifically in the 18th arrondissement, where a resilient and thriving community exists. La Goutte d'Or (the drop of gold) or locally known as Little Africa, is a neighborhood that borders one of Paris's most popular cabarets, the Moulin Rouge. The Chateau Rouge, Gare Du Nord, Goutte D'Or, and Barbes neighborhoods are all metropolitan districts where people of African descent work, thrive, and live. History buffs in search of an immersive cultural experience in Paris can wander through these congested city blocks of Goutte D'Or, home to Parisian locals from North and West Africa. Busy African hair-braiding shops, produce markets, textile businesses, and art galleries will transport tourists, at least for a couple of hours, from Europe to the world's second-largest continent. Paris armorial bearings, which include the stylized boat and fleur-de-lis, are seen on metro bridges in the La Goutte d'Or district. Photograph by Jarry & Tripelon, Anzenberger/Redux Parisians head to the open-air Marché Dujean to pick up fresh spices, African seafood staples, and a variety of other food offerings, such as those found at this halal butcher's shop. Photograph by Jarry & Tripelon, Anzenberger/Redux The Pantheon's Josephine Baker tribute, Little Africa Paris Village, the Le Paris Noir walking tour, and more are informative ways that educate travelers about the history of the African diaspora, which has influenced the city's world-renowned artistic and cultural identity. Here's how you can experience it. (6 ways to experience the Paris of the Roaring '20s.) Take a tour of Little Africa Guided by a local expert, tourists can take a walking tour through Little Africa, an in-depth journey into the culture and history of the 18th arrondissement. 'French people don't feel comfortable talking about race,' says Kevi Donat, the tour operator and founder of Le Paris Noir. 'We use the word 'origins' here.' Donat yearned to create more spaces, like Le Paris Noir, to share the African diaspora culture and provide a way to help others explore the city's African origins. Since migrating from Martinique, the young Parisian has proudly called the city his home for over two decades. The engaging, two-hour Le Paris Noir walking tour honors the significant role that people of African descent played in Paris's larger community and their influence on its history, as described on a journey through areas near the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg Gardens, around Montmartre, and along the riverbanks of the Seine. Tourists learn about how Black Americans fled to Paris in the mid-1900s to find peace during rising racial prejudices and the pre-Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Travelers on this unique journey ascend Paris's hilliest roads near the Sacré-Cœur, where Donat would point out discreet cafés where Josephine Baker performed. Then, he would describe how the 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hellfighters (Black American WWI Soldiers), introduced jazz music to Europe and popularized jazz cafés in Paris, such as the now-defunct Café Tournon. Along the tour route, visitors will also see current and former sites, such as Les Deux Magots, where world-renowned jazz artist Miles Davis was once a patron and where authors Richard Wright and James Baldwin had passionate debates about the plight of being Black in America. Baldwin also worked on his first novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, in Café Flore at 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain. Journalist William Gardner and writer Ralph Ellison were known to frequent Café Tournon (now Le Tournon) , and author Langston Hughes dined at the now-defunct Le Grand Duc. Visitors may want to consider grabbing a bite to eat at La Palette (43 Rue de Seine), a favorite spot for painter Beauford Delaney. In the 9th Arrondissement, history buffs may spot the signed light post plaque dedicated to André Breton, a French writer and co-founder of the Surrealist movement, as well as an ally in the Négritude movement. This movement was a 1930s response to colonialism from French-speaking Black intellectuals aimed at reclaiming and celebrating Black identity and African cultural heritage. Le Paris Noir is a truly eye-opening way to uncover how Paris has always been a destination that has cultivated Black art, even through its complicated history, strife, and controversy. Visitors in search of sweets should consider a visit to La Rose de Tunis, one of several cake shops located throughout Paris, including the Little Africa location at 7 Boulevard Ornano. Photograph by Jarry & Tripelon, Anzenberger/Redux A woman passes by La Régulière, a bookstore, workshop, and café at 43 Rue Myrha in Paris's La Goutte d'Or neighborhood. Photograph by Michael Zumstein, Agence VU/Redux Art and jazz in Little Africa Immersive travelers who want to explore Paris's Little Africa neighborhood independently can visit Little Africa Village, a multidisciplinary space and cultural hub, located at 6 bis Rue des Gardes, where artists of African descent can support one another. The basement—the pièce de résistance—features an ongoing exhibition that showcases the perspectives of Black artists on living in Paris. For music lovers in Little Africa, the recommended Le Baiser Salé is a jazz club that fuses Afro-beats with French Jazz; meanwhile, La Gare, a renovated train station, hosts jazz late nights that usually feature African musicians. (Can Paris live up to the hype? Find out on a walking tour of its gilded past.) Taste the flavors of Africa in Paris Marché Dejean Little Africa is home to several markets that feature vendors selling spices such as piri piri and berbere. Located on Rue Dejean, Marché Dejean is an open-air market where stalls and local entrepreneurs sell a variety of produce, including okra, spinach, and seafood staples such as tilapia and barracuda. Many French chefs of African descent have transformed their home-cooked meals (usually served at a restaurant) into prepared dishes to sell at the market. Baraka Baraka, a spice shop located off Rue Robert Fleury, is an unexpected find far outside of Little Africa. A short walk from the Eiffel Tower, Chef Antompindi Cocagne, also known as Chef Anto, owns a brick-and-mortar shop that features authentic African herbs and pays homage to her hometown of Libreville, Gabon. She serves honey wines and ingredients imported from various regions of West Africa to educate the local community and tourists about the culinary history and offerings based rooted in her heritage. (Sights and bites: What to eat while touring Paris.) Kuti Chef Antoine Joss Lecocq's third restaurant, Kuti, is a stunning amalgamation of African street gastronomy and culinary tradition. The lively, canteen restaurant is painted with bold greens and oranges splashed across the exterior and is a good place for lunch. Entering the space feels like a warm hug; the intimate seating arrangements make enjoying Kuti's menu a communal experience. After his six-month journey across Cameroon, Lecocq returned to Paris with knowledge on how to prepare authentic pan-African fare. Kuti's delectable masa servings are probably their most famous dishes; a Nigerian pancake covered with either chicken or beef and plated, slathered with spicy, savory Baobob sauce, was seen on nearly every packed table. Their hearty vegetarian kondré stews and "Jungle Beat" dishes—crispy fried chicken atop of a bed of yellow rice, potatoes, spinach, and plantains, blanketed in Afro-spices—were my favorite plates. La Table Penja Chef Pierre Siewe offers his innovative, fine-dining interpretation of African fare with a French twist at La Table Penja. The Michelin-recognized restaurant opened in October 2024 and serves experimental, creative dishes such as thyme-roasted French sirloin paired with a fresh green Penja peppercorn sauce and rock octopus poached in court-bouillon, seared on a griddle. End your dinner with Siewe's sweet-and-spicy peppercorn ice cream—one of the most memorable, pleasant treats from my trip. (How to explore Paris from the seat of a bicycle.) Where to stay Tourists should consider staying at the centrally-located 25Hours Hotel Terminus Nord , situated in front of Gare Du Nord train station—also in a tourist hotspot. The eclectic hotel has a bike rental service and is popular for remote workers. Guests can travel outside of the busy 10th arrondissement with ease whenever they wish. However, guests who want to explore Paris's African diaspora history on their own should consider checking into the Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris , a luxury hotel located just a short walk away from the Arc de Triomphe. Guests can opt to stay in the Ray Charles Suite, a room where the iconic African American jazz singer stayed. In his honor, the downstairs restaurant has nightly jazz soirees, and the monochromatic cigar room next door is a moody, crimson-red escape. Guests at both hotels can access the metro via nearby major train stations. They can take the 'B' or 'C' lines to Parisian landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower, and more. Editor's pick: In addition to the Le Paris Noir walking tour, Walking The Spirit Tours also offers customized Paris vacation packages and guided tours that provide travelers with the authentic history and spirit of Paris based on founder Julia Browne's personal experiences living in France for 12 years. This trip was created with the support of the Paris Je t'Aime tourism office and Hotel 25H. Malik Peay is a culture writer from Los Angeles who uncovers distinctive art and food scenes of global destinations. Follow him on Instagram.
Forbes
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
What Is Queer Food? A Talk With Author John Birdsall
A banner reading 'We Are Everywhere' at a Gay Pride march on Fifth Avenue in New York City, USA, ... More July 1979. (Photo by) In his book released a month ago, What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution, writer/historian John Birdsall challenges readers to dive deeply into a chronicle of culture that was quite literally curated and nourished by people having to hide a giant piece of their authentic selves. This important record not only reveals so much more about who these figures were--like James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Esther Eng, Harry Baker, Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney, and James Beard, etc.,--but firmly establishes their rightful places in history, and within the culinary sphere of taste and pleasure that hummed throughout the 20th century. Originally set out to produce more of a memoir, Birdsall was encouraged by his editor, Melanie Tortoroli, to see this project as an opportunity to widen the scope, to create something that hadn't been done before, all while still being able to share a sense of his own perspective and experience within a world he knew well and deeply loved. She encouraged him to take queerness in food in whatever direction he saw fit. Birdsall admits there came a well of freedom upon such an invitation to explore. Cover of Birdsall's new book, What is Queer Food? Released on June 3. Cover illustration by Naomi P. ... More Wilkinson and book design by Sarah May Wilkinson (no relation). The Book The result is a book that is truly the first of its kind, one that spans genres and takes risks. In one way, Birdsall picks up where he left off in his 2013 article, 'America, Your Food is So Gay' for Lucky Peach; and from his 2020 biography of James Beard, The Man Who Ate Too Much, in order to take on this next, much broader project. Nevertheless, Birdsall says, 'I think this book has always been in me.' In an unmistakably beautiful, literary voice, one underscored by the intersection of history, emotion, and experience, What is Queer Food? also asks readers to look at the term 'queer' through a sharper lens; to give it more dimension and nuance, something he said younger generations--like the Gen Zers, who've shown up at his book signings and talks--do with a fluency that his own generation hasn't fully grasped. According to recent research, approximately 30% of Gen Z adults identify as queer and LBGTQ+ (HRC) and, as Birdsall adds, 'generationally, there's more nuance; it is not so narrowly defined as it once was--what queerness can be--as just gay or lesbian.' He offers this statistic while noting Toni Morrison's famous quote upon winning the Nobel Prize for literature about being marginalized; it has become an anthem of sorts, a rally cry, for those otherwise othered and hidden in plain sight. Author John Birdsall at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, June 22. When talking to Birdsall further about how he gathered stories for the book, he admits it was not easy given the amount many of the figures explored had to hide who they really were, therefore leaving very little evidence as to their private lives. 'For me, as a writer and historian, my practice has been using emotion to try to illuminate queer and trans histories that have been obscured," Birdsall said in our recent interview, 'We may have scraps of archival information, but there is so much to fill in,' he added. Unfortunately, things like letters and cards or other memorabilia and souvenirs from meaningful relationships were simply too dangerous to keep for fear of damning consequences. Birdsall tells us that even what we know today of some of James Beard's close connections, for example, are due to an assistant's forethought (or nosiness). In some cases, notes were retrieved from a wastebasket for fear of them being lost forever. To people like Beard---who was so visible and in the public eye--it just wasn't safe to keep anything around that would be considered sentimental. Which made digging for the whisps of memory and experience surrounding the many figures Birdsall explores in the book, all the more impenetrable. He saw it, however, as both a challenge and opportunity. He took the bits and pieces discovered over the last decade and assembled them while further imagining the worlds the figures lived in, and, what those worlds and experiences tasted like, so to speak. From a recent signing in June for Birdsall's new book. Part of his solution was to lean on the emotions he knew must have accentuated real events. For example, Sunday women in apartments in NYC of the 1950s he learned would gather together to listen to Tallulah Bankhead who, as Birdsall described, 'Had the power in her to control her own sexuality and still have a public voice and be a star.' Although there's no record that fully reveals what those gatherings encompassed, Birdsall helps readers wonder on the page about how food must have played a role amidst such powerful moments in time. Friendsgiving, Anyone? Birdsall says, despite how ubiquitous this annual occasion has become, 'Queer people know they really pioneered it. It is taken for granted that we choose our family--even if we cherish and celebrate with our blood families--there's a culture of the chosen family that is really encapsulated there.' For many, at one time, this 'holiday' meant one safe haven when there was no other. So, Birdsall investigates the lives of many in the book while filling in the scenes of places like New York City's Café Nicholson with Edna Lewis; in San Francisco at the Paper Doll Club; in Los Angeles with Harry Baker as he created his bewitching Chiffon cake; or even the author's own home on page 473 of the New York Times Cook Book where Birdsall became enthralled by a golden brioche. Readers journey through the stories on precipices of emotion the figures covered quite likely endured. From deeply satisfying displays of creativity and community around food and taste they built to endless moments of pain suffered under the cloaks of lies thrust upon them. This book, Birdsall believes, creates a foundation for more to come. It's a green light to to sound the alarm. It's a marquee to celebrate the tales of the untold, still sitting in boxes in the attic. With such a revelatory foundation, Birdsall is passing a torch to the next generation to to keep every name in queer food present on our plates, on our restaurant awnings, in our cookbooks, and out of the closet. Signing books on tour, author John Birdsall.
