From 1970 until his death in 1987, James Baldwin lived a self-imposed exile in Saint-Paul de Vence, France. This period of Baldwin's life served as his own personal liberation from the cultural and societal oppression he felt as a black writer in the US. Composed of more than seventy interviews, the book explores "life with Jimmy" through personal reminisces of well-known artists, writers, and celebrities, such as Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Angela Davis, Sol Stein, Herb Gold, George Wein, Maya Angelou, Bill Wyman, Caryl Phillips, Colm Toibin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nicholas Delbanco, Toni Morrison, and many others. --from inside jacket flap.