To his New York City nephew and niece, iconic author and civil rights activist James Baldwin was mostly known as "Uncle Jimmy," although the siblings would realize soon enough that he was also "a famous writer" of world renown. "When you gonna write a book about MeeeeEEE!?" nephew Tejan Karefa-Smart once asked. This book, Little Man, Little Man, was his answer.
Four-year-old TJ runs up and down his street playing ball. His two most constant companions are an older boy and girl--seven-year-old WT, "who like a brother," and eight-year-old Blinky, who "[l]ook like she do everything she can to be a boy." Around their Harlem neighborhood, Mr Man, the building janitor, "always try to act like he mean. He ain't mean." TJ runs errands for Miss Lee, who's married to Mr Man, and for Miss Beanpole, who lives behind multiple locks and observes the outside world only from her window. Baldwin presents TJ's personal microcosm, describing the "little store" run by a Puerto Rican man, front steps and fire escapes, the local bar and churches.
Originally published in 1976, Baldwin's only children's title did not initially fare well. Four decades later, Duke University Press resurrects Baldwin's self-described "celebration of the self-esteem of black children." The new edition retains the original illustrations created by Yoran Cazac, a Caucasian French artist with whom Baldwin chose to collaborate. At 42, Little Man, Little Man has aged well. What might have been permanently dismissed as a "book [that] lacks intensity and focus" has instead matured into a timely representation of an urban African American childhood, presented in "the black vernacular style of [Baldwin's] Harlem neighborhood," made accessible once more to eager new audiences. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon