Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka | |
---|---|
Born | Everett Leroy Jones October 7, 1934 Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
Died | January 9, 2014 Newark, New Jersey, U.S. | (aged 79)
Pen name | LeRoi Jones, Imamu Amear Baraka[1] |
Occupation |
|
Period | 1961–2014 |
Genre | Poetry and drama |
Spouses | |
Children | |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Service/ | United States Air Force |
Years of service | 1954–57[3][4] |
Website | |
www |
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka,
Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from
Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some compare Baraka to James Baldwin and recognize him as one of the most respected and most widely published Black writers of his generation,[8][9] though some have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, and homophobia.[10] Baraka's brief tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (in 2002 and 2003) involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?", which resulted in accusations of antisemitism and negative attention from critics and politicians over his assertion that the US and Israeli governments had advanced knowledge of the September 11 attacks.[11][12]
Biographical information
Early life (1934–1965)
Baraka was born in
He won a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1951 but transferred in 1952 to Howard University. His classes in philosophy and religious studies helped lay a foundation for his later writings. He subsequently studied at Columbia University and The New School without taking a degree.
In 1954, he joined the
The same year, he moved to
Baraka also worked as editor and critic for the literary and arts journal
Baraka visited Cuba in July 1960 with a Fair Play for Cuba Committee delegation and reported his impressions in his essay "Cuba Libre".[22] There he encountered openly rebellious artists who declared him to be a "cowardly bourgeois individualist"[23] more focused on building his reputation than trying to help those who were enduring oppression. This encounter led to a dramatic change in his writing and goals, causing him to become emphatic about supporting black nationalism.[citation needed]
In 1961 Baraka co-authored a "Declaration of Conscience" in support of
His first book of poems, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, was published in 1961. Baraka's article "The Myth of a 'Negro Literature'" (1962) stated that "a Negro literature, to be a legitimate product of the Negro experience in America, must get at that experience in exactly the terms America has proposed for it in its most ruthless identity". He also stated in the same work that as an element of American culture, the Negro was entirely misunderstood by Americans. The reason for this misunderstanding and for the lack of black literature of merit was, according to Jones:
In most cases the Negroes who found themselves in a position to pursue some art, especially the art of literature, have been members of the Negro middle class, a group that has always gone out of its way to cultivate any mediocrity, as long as that mediocrity was guaranteed to prove to America, and recently to the world at large, that they were not really who they were, i.e., Negroes.
As long as black writers were obsessed with being an accepted middle class, Baraka wrote, they would never be able to speak their mind, and that would always lead to failure. Baraka felt that America only made room for white obfuscators, not black ones.[25][26]
In 1963 Baraka (under the name LeRoi Jones) published Blues People: Negro Music in White America, his account of the development of black music from slavery to contemporary jazz.[27] When the work was re-issued in 1999, Baraka wrote in the Introduction that he wished to show that "The music was the score, the actually expressed creative orchestration, reflection of Afro-American life ... That the music was explaining the history as the history was explaining the music. And that both were expressions of and reflections of the people."[28] He argued that though the slaves had brought their musical traditions from Africa, the blues were an expression of what black people became in America: "The way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American captives."[29]
Baraka (under the name LeRoi Jones) wrote an acclaimed, controversial play titled Dutchman, in which a white woman accosts a black man on the New York City Subway. The play premiered in 1964 and received the Obie Award for Best American Play in the same year.[30] A film of the play, directed by Anthony Harvey, was released in 1967.[31] The play has been revived several times, including a 2013 production staged in the Russian and Turkish Bathhouse in the East Village, Manhattan.[32]
After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Baraka changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka.[33] At this time, he also left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory/Theater School (BARTS) since the Black Arts Movement created a new visual representation of art. However, the Black Arts Repertory Theater School remained open for less than a year. In its short time BARTS attracted many well-known artists, including Sonia Sanchez, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler.[34] The Black Arts Repertory Theater School's closure prompted conversation with many other black artists who wanted to create similar institutions. Consequently, there was a surge in the establishment of these institutions in many places across the United States. In December 1965[35] Baraka moved back to Newark after allegations surfaced that he was using federal antipoverty welfare funds for his theater.[36]
Baraka became a leading advocate and theorist for the burgeoning black art during this time.
Baraka even uses
"Black Art" quickly became the major poetic manifesto of the Black Arts Literary Movement, and in it, Jones declaimed, "we want poems that kill", which coincided with the rise of armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself" that promoted confrontation with the white power structure.[8] Rather than use poetry as an escapist mechanism, Baraka saw poetry as a weapon of action.[39]
In April 1965, Baraka's "A Poem for Black Hearts" was published as a direct response to Malcolm X's assassination, and it further exemplifies the poet's uses of poetry to generate anger and endorse rage against oppression.[40] Like many of his poems, it showed no remorse in its use of raw emotion to convey its message.[41] It was published in the September issue of Negro Digest and was one of the first responses to Malcolm's death to be exposed to the public.[42] The poem is directed particularly at black men, and it scoldingly labels them "faggots" in order to challenge them to act and continue the fallen activist's fight against the white establishment.
Baraka also promoted theatre as a training for the "real revolution" yet to come, with the arts being a way to forecast the future as he saw it. In "The Revolutionary Theatre", Baraka wrote, "We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony, if it means some soul will be moved."[43] In opposition to the peaceful protests inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Baraka believed that a physical uprising must follow the literary one.
Baraka's decision to leave Greenwich Village in 1965 was an outgrowth of his response to the debate about the future of black liberation.[44]
1966–1980
In 1966, Baraka married his second wife, Sylvia Robinson, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka.[45] The two would open a facility in Newark known as Spirit House, a combination playhouse and artists' residence.[36] In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. The year after, he was arrested in Newark for having allegedly carried an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the 1967 Newark riots. He was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison. His poem "Black People", published in the Evergreen Review in December 1967, was read by the judge in court,[46] including the phrase: "All the stores will open if you say the magic words. The magic words are: "Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick up!"[47] Shortly afterward an appeals court reversed the sentence based on his defense by attorney Raymond A. Brown.[48] He later joked that he was charged with holding "two revolvers and two poems".[43]
Not long after the 1967 riots, Baraka generated controversy when he went on the radio with a Newark police captain and
In 1967, Baraka (still LeRoi Jones) visited
In 1970 he supported Kenneth A. Gibson's candidacy for mayor of Newark; Gibson was elected as the city's first African-American mayor.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka courted controversy by penning some strongly
Prior to this time, Baraka prided himself on being a forceful advocate of Black cultural nationalism; however, by the mid-1970s, he began finding its racial individuality confining.[6] Baraka's separation from the Black Arts Movement began because he saw certain Black writers – capitulationists, as he called them – countering the Black Arts Movement that he created. He believed that the groundbreakers in the Black Arts Movement were doing something that was new, needed, useful, and Black, and those who did not want to see a promotion of black expression were "appointed" to the scene to damage the movement.[25]
In 1974, Baraka distanced himself from
In 1979, he became a lecturer in the
In June 1979 Baraka was arrested and jailed at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Different accounts emerged around the arrest, yet all sides agreed that Baraka and his wife, Amina, were in their car arguing over the cost of their children's shoes. The police version of events holds that they were called to the scene after a report of an assault in progress. They maintain that Baraka was hitting his wife, and when they moved to intervene, he attacked them as well, whereupon they used the necessary force to subdue him. Amina's account contrasted with that of the police; she held a news conference the day after the arrest accusing the police of lying. A grand jury dismissed the assault charge, but the resisting arrest charge moved forward.
1980–2014
In 1980 Baraka published an essay in the Village Voice that was titled Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite. Baraka insisted that a Village Voice editor titled it and not himself. In the essay, Baraka went over his life history, including his marriage to Hettie Cohen, who was Jewish. He stated that after the assassination of Malcolm X he found himself thinking, "As a Black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her ... How could someone be married to the enemy?" He eventually divorced Hettie and left her with their two bi-racial daughters. In the essay, Baraka went on to say
We also know that much of the vaunted Jewish support of Black civil rights organizations was in order to use them. Jews, finally, are white, and suffer from the same kind of white chauvinism that separates a great many whites from the Black struggle. ... these Jewish intellectuals have been able to pass over into the Promised Land of American privilege.
In the essay he also defended his position against Israel, saying, "Zionism is a form of racism." Near the end of the essay, Baraka stated the following:
Anti-Semitism is as ugly an idea and as deadly as white racism and Zionism ...As for my personal trek through the wasteland of anti-Semitism, it was momentary and never completely real. ... I have written only one poem that has definite aspects of anti-Semitism...and I have repudiated it as thoroughly as I can.[59]
The poem Baraka referenced was "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet", which contained lines including
...Smile jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you ... I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured ... So come for the rent, jewboys ... one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once.[10][59]
During the 1982–83 academic year, Baraka returned to Columbia University as a visiting professor, teaching a course entitled "Black Women and Their Fictions". After becoming a full professor of African Studies at Stony Brook in 1985, Baraka took an indefinite visiting appointment in Rutgers University's English department in 1988; over the next two years, he taught a number of courses in African American literature and music. Although Baraka sought a permanent, tenured appointment at the rank of full professor in early 1990 (in part due to the proximity between the university's campus in
In 1989 Baraka won an
In July 2002, Baraka was named
Baraka collaborated with
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Amiri Baraka on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[64]
In 2003, Baraka's daughter Shani, aged 31, and her lesbian partner, Rayshon Homes, were murdered in the home of Shani's sister, Wanda Wilson Pasha, by Pasha's ex-husband, James Coleman.[65][66] Prosecutors argued that Coleman shot Shani because she had helped her sister separate from her husband.[67] A New Jersey jury found Coleman (also known as Ibn El-Amin Pasha) guilty of murdering Shani Baraka and Rayshon Holmes, and he was sentenced to 168 years in prison for the 2003 shooting.[68]
His son,
Death
Amiri Baraka died on January 9, 2014, at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, after being hospitalized in the facility's intensive care unit for one month before his death. The cause of death was not reported initially, but it is mentioned that Baraka had a long struggle with diabetes.[69] Later reports indicated that he died from complications after a recent surgery.[70] Baraka's funeral was held at Newark Symphony Hall on January 18, 2014.[71]
Controversies
Baraka's work has been criticized for being racist, homophobic, antisemitic and misogynist among others.[72]
Anti-white sentiment
Baraka and his writings emanated extreme and hostile anti-white sentiment.[73][74] He viewed blacks as morally superior than whites, whom he believed were innately evil.[75]
In his 1984 autobiography, he wrote:[76]
A woman asked me in all earnestness, couldn't any whites help? I said, you can help by dying. You are a cancer. You can help the world's people with your death.
The following is from a 1965 essay:
Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank ... The average
ofay [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.[77]
In 2009, he was again asked about the quote, and placed it in a personal and political perspective:
Those quotes are from the essays in Home, a book written almost fifty years ago. The anger was part of the mindset created by, first, the
Robert Kennedy. What changed my mind was that I became a Marxist, after recognizing classes within the Black community and the class struggle even after we had worked and struggled to elect the first Black Mayor of Newark, Kenneth Gibson.[78]
Misogyny and advocacy of rape
Baraka advocated for the rape of white women by Black men, believing that it was a politically legitimate act.[79] Baraka objectified white women, believing that they served as a location of racial struggle rather than as human beings.[79] He implied that white women would enjoy being raped by Black men, experiencing the rape as "sexually exhilarating—a God-like gift that no white man could give to her". If she didn't, and she instead perceived her rape by a Black man as a "beast-like violation", then she was racist.[75] Author bell hooks commented on Baraka's misogyny in her book Ain't I a Woman?:[75][80]
Ironically, the “power” of black men that Baraka and others celebrated was the stereotypical, racist image of the black man as primitive, strong, and virile. Although these same images of black men had been evoked by racist whites to support the argument that all black men are rapists, they were now being romanticized as positive characteristics.
Homophobia
Baraka frequently denounced
Antisemitism
1960s & 1970s
In his book, Black Magic: Collected Poetry, 1961-1967, Baraka wrote:[15]
Smile jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you ... I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured ... So come for the rent, jewboys ... one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once.[10][59]
In the 1967 poem "The Black Man is Making New Gods", Baraka accused Jews of having stolen knowledge of Africa, transporting it to Europe, where they became white and claimed it as their own.[75][84] He wrote of Jesus as a "fag" and as "the dead jew" who, Baraka argues, was a Jewish scam on Christians.[75] Baraka embraces Nazi genocidal depictions of Jews, who embody a "dangerous germ culture".[75]
His 1972 essay collection "Raise, Race, Rays, Raze" refers to people as "jew-slick", "jeworiented revolutionaries", and also "cohen edited negro history".[85]
1980s
In 1980 Baraka published an essay in the Village Voice that was titled Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite. Baraka insisted that a Village Voice editor titled it and not himself. In the essay Baraka went over his life history, including his marriage to Hettie Cohen, who was Jewish. He stated that after the assassination of Malcolm X he found himself thinking, "As a Black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her ... How could someone be married to the enemy?" He eventually divorced Hettie and left her with their two bi-racial daughters. In the essay Baraka went on to say
We also know that much of the vaunted Jewish support of Black civil rights organizations was in order to use them. Jews, finally, are white, and suffer from the same kind of white chauvinism that separates a great many whites from Black struggle. ... these Jewish intellectuals have been able to pass over into the Promised Land of American privilege.
In the essay he also defended his position against Israel, saying, "Zionism is a form of racism." Near the end of the essay Baraka stated the following:
Anti-Semitism is as ugly an idea and as deadly as white racism and Zionism ...As for my personal trek through the wasteland of anti-Semitism, it was momentary and never completely real. ... I have written only one poem that has definite aspects of anti-Semitism...and I have repudiated it as thoroughly as I can.[59]
September 11 attacks
In July 2002, ten months after the
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
...
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Baraka said that he believed Israelis and President George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks,[87] citing what he described as information that had been reported in the American and Israeli press and on Jordanian television. Baraka himself denied that the poem is antisemitic, due to the use of word "Israeli" rather than "Jew".[88][11][12]
However, antisemitism watchdog organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) denounced the poem as antisemitic. The ADL noted that the "4000 workers" conspiracy theory had initially referred to Jews writ large[89] and claimed that Baraka was using an antisemitic tactic of replacing references to Jews writ large with references to Israel and then claiming a comment is merely anti-Zionist.[90]
After the poem's publication, then-governor Jim McGreevey tried to remove Baraka from the post of Poet Laureate of New Jersey, to which he had been appointed following Gerald Stern in July 2002. McGreevey learned that there was no legal way, according to the law authorizing and defining the position, to remove Baraka. On October 17, 2002, legislation to abolish the post was introduced in the State Senate and subsequently signed by Governor McGreevey, becoming effective July 2, 2003.[91]
Baraka ceased being poet laureate when the law became effective. In response to legal action filed by Baraka, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that state officials were immune from such suits, and in November 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal of the case.[92]
Journalist Richard M. Cohen in The Washington Post denounced Baraka's "anti-Semitic bleat" and stated that: "Baraka is a bigger idiot than he is a dangerous anti-Semite".[93]
Honors and awards
Baraka served as the second Poet Laureate of New Jersey from July 2002 until the position was abolished on July 2, 2003. In response to the attempts to remove Baraka as the state's Poet Laureate, a nine-member advisory board named him the poet laureate of the Newark Public Schools in December 2002.[94]
Baraka received honors from a number of prestigious foundations, including the following: fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Langston Hughes Award from the City College of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Before Columbus Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.[95]
A short excerpt from Amiri Baraka's poetry was selected to be used for a permanent installation by artist
I have seen many suns
use
the endless succession of hours
piled upon each other
Carved in marble, this installation features excerpts from the works of several New Jersey poets (from
Legacy and influence
Despite numerous controversies and polarizing content of his work, Baraka's literary influence is undeniable. His co-founding of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s promoted a uniquely black nationalist perspective and influenced an entire literary generation.[98] Critic Naila Keleta-Mae argues that Baraka's legacy is one of "saying the unsayable", a course that likely damaged his own literary reputation and canonization.[99] For example, Baraka was left out of the 2013 anthology Angles of Ascent, a collection of contemporary African American poetry published by Norton. In a review of the anthology, Baraka, himself, criticized editor Charles H. Rowell's hostility towards the Black Arts Movement, calling Rowell's "attempt to analyze and even compartmentalize" contemporary African American poetry as "flawed".[100] Indeed, Rowell's introduction to Angles of Ascent references the "fetters of narrow political and social demands that have nothing to do with the production of artistic texts", evincing a political/apolitical dichotomy where the editor considers overly political works of lesser artistic value. Critic Emily Ruth Rutter recognizes the contribution to African American literary studies of Angles of Ascent yet also proposes adding Baraka and others to ensure students do not "unknowingly accept" the notion that Baraka and writers like him were somehow absent from influencing twenty-first century poetry.[100]
In Rain Taxi, Richard Oyama criticized Baraka's militant aesthetic, writing that Baraka's "career came to represent a cautionary tale of the worst 'tendencies' of the 1960s—the alienating rejections, the fanatical self-righteousness, the impulse toward separatism and Stalinist repression versus multi-racial/class coalition-building ... In the end, Baraka's work suffered because he preferred ideology over art, forgetting the latter outlasts us all."[101]
Baraka's participation in a diverse array of artistic genres combined with his own social activism allowed him to have a wide range of influence. When discussing his influence in an interview with NPR, Baraka stressed that he had influenced numerous people. When asked what he would write for his own epitaph, he quipped, "We don't know if he ever died",[98] evincing the personal importance of his own legacy to him. NPR's obituary for Baraka describes the depths of his influence simply: "...throughout his life – the Black Arts Movement never stopped".[14] Baraka's influence also extends to the publishing world, where some writers credit him with opening doors to white publishing houses which African American writers previously had been unable to access.[27]
For the 60th anniversary of Baraka’s Blues People, trumpeter and composer Russell Gunn premiered a suite, The Blues and Its People, inspired by it at the Apollo.[102]
Works
Poetry
- 1961: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
- 1964: The Dead Lecturer: Poems
- 1969: Black Magic
- 1970: It's Nation Time
- 1980: New Music, New Poetry (India Navigation)
- 1995: Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
- 1995: Wise, Why's Y's
- 1996: Funk Lore: New Poems
- 2003: Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems
- 2005: The Book of Monk
Drama
- 1964: Dutchman
- 1964: The Slave
- 1967: The Baptism and The Toilet
- 1966: A Black Mass
- 1968: Home on the Range and Police[103]
- 1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
- 1970: Slave Ship
- 1978: The Motion of History and Other Plays
- 1979: The Sidney Poet Heroical, (published by I. Reed Books, 1979)
- 1989: Song
- 2013: Most Dangerous Man in America (W. E. B. Du Bois)
Fiction
- 1965: The System of Dante's Hell
- 1967: Tales
- 2004: Un Poco Low Coup, (graphic novel published by Ishmael Reed Publishing)
- 2006: Tales of the Out & the Gone
Non-fiction
- 1963: Blues People
- 1965: Home: Social Essays
- 1965: The Revolutionary Theatre
- 1968: Black Music
- 1971: Raise Race Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965
- 1972: Kawaida Studies: The New Nationalism
- 1979: Poetry for the Advanced
- 1981: reggae or not!
- 1984: Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974–1979
- 1984: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
- 1987: The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues
- 2003: The Essence of Reparations
Edited works
- 1968: Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (co-editor, with Larry Neal)
- 1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
- 1983: Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (edited with Amina Baraka)
- 1999: The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
- 2000: The Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
- 2008: Billy Harper: Blueprints of Jazz, Volume 2 (Audio CD)
Filmography
- The New Ark (1968)[104][105]
- One P.M. (1972)
- Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds (1978) ... Himself
- Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement (1978) ... Himself
- Poetry in Motion (1982)
- Furious Flower: A Video Anthology of African American Poetry 1960–95, Volume II: Warriors (1998) ... Himself
- Through Many Dangers: The Story of Gospel Music (1996)
- Bulworth (1998) ... Rastaman
- Piñero (2001) ... Himself
- Strange Fruit (2002) ... Himself
- Ralph Ellison: An American Journey (2002) ... Himself
- Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004) ... Himself
- Keeping Time: The Life, Music & Photography of Milt Hinton (2004) ... Himself
- Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow(2005) ... Himself
- 500 Years Later (2005) (voice) ... Himself
- The Ballad of Greenwich Village (2005) ... Himself
- The Pact (2006) ... Himself
- Retour à Gorée (2007) ... Himself
- Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place (2007)
- Revolution '67 (2007) ... Himself
- Turn Me On (2007) (TV) ... Himself
- Oscene (2007) ... Himself
- Corso: The Last Beat (2008)
- The Black Candle (2008)
- Ferlinghetti: A City Light (2008) ... Himself
- W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney (2009) ... Himself
- Motherland (2010)
Discography
- It's Nation Time (Black Forum/Motown, 1972)
- New Music - New Poetry (India Navigation, 1982) with David Murray and Steve McCall
- Real Song (Enja, 1995)
With Billy Harper
With the New York Art Quartet
- New York Art Quartet (ESP-Disk, 1965)
With Malachi Thompson
- Freebop Now! (Delmark, 1998)
with David Murray
- Fo Deuk Revue (Justin Time, 1997), "Evidence"
with William Parker
- I Plan to Stay a Believer (AUM Fidelity, 2010)
References
- ^ ISBN 9780817357320.
- ^ Bonamo, Mark (July 1, 2014). "Newark mayor's new chief of staff Amiri Baraka, Jr.: 'I've got my brother's back'". Politicker NJ.
- ^ Schudel, Matt (January 10, 2014). "Amiri Baraka, 79: Architect of Black Arts Movement". The Washington Post. p. B5.
- ^
"Amiri Baraka - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
He served in the Air Force from 1954 until 1957.
- PEN American Center. Archived from the originalon June 26, 2012. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
- ^ a b c d Nelson, Cary (2000). Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 997.
- ^ "Amiri Baraka". AmiriBaraka.com. Celeste Bateman and Associates. Archived from the original on November 23, 2014. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
- ^ ISBN 978-0195138832.
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign..
- ^ ASIN B004HFR7VY.
- ^ a b Stevens, Katherine (February 25, 2003). "Baraka refutes criticism. Controversial N.J. poet laureate denies accusations of racism". Yale Daily News. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ a b Pearce, Jeremy (February 9, 2003). "When poetry seems to matter". The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ "Amiri Baraka, legendary poet who never abandoned Newark, dead at 79". NJ.com. January 9, 2014. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ a b Ulaby, Neda (January 9, 2014). "Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Controversial And Achingly Beautiful". NPR. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
- ^ a b Slotnik, Daniel (January 10, 2014). "Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79". The New York Times.
- ^ a b "Imamu Amiri Baraka African American Author". Citrus County, Florida: Black History in America. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
- ^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 661.
- ^ Baraka himself said he was inspired by Allen Ginsberg's Howl, stating, "I had been moved by Howl because it talked about a world I could identify with and relate to... I thought Howl was something special. It was a breakthrough for me. I now knew poetry could be about things that I could relate to."[This quote needs a citation]
- JSTOR 40547807.
- ^ Birmingham, Jed. "Yugen", RealityStudio, April 30, 2006. Accessed January 18, 2010.
- ^ S2CID 160151597.
- ^ The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was brought to nationwide attention through an April 1960 advertisement in The New York Times funded by Castro. FPCC's founder and first leader was CBS newsman Robert Taber. The FPCC fast had 7,000 members in 25 "adult chapters" and 40 "student councils". The July trip included the writers Julian Mayfield and Harold Cruse, the historian John Henrik Clarke and the militant NAACP leader Robert F. Williams. In December 1960, a delegation of 326 members of the FPCC visited the island. "Cuba Libre" was first published in the Evergreen Review, Vol. 4, No. 15, November–December 1960.
- ^ Gates (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. p. 662.
- ^ The "Declaration of Conscience" was written and signed by Margaret Randall, Marc Schleifer (now Abdallah Schleifer after converting to Islam from Judaism), Elaine de Kooning, LeRoi Jones, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Norman Mailer and published in the Monthly Review.
- ^ a b Martin, Reginald (1995). "Historical Overviews of The Black Arts Movement", in The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Nelson, Cary (ed.) (2002).Modern American Poetry: An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- ^ a b c "Amiri Baraka 1934-2014". poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
- ^ Jones, LeRoi (2002). Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Harper Perennial. pp. ix–x.
- ^ Jones, LeRoi (2002). Blues People. p. 17.
- ^ "Dutchman". SamuelFrench.com. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
- ^ "Dutchman". IMDb.com. February 1968. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
- ^ Kennedy, Randy (October 31, 2013). "A Play That's Sure to Make You Sweat". The New York Times. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
- ^ "Amiri Baraka". Biography. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
- ^ "Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School (BARTS) and the Black Arts Movement – Black Power in American Memory". blackpower.web.unc.edu. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- ^ "Historical Overviews of the Black Arts Movement". english.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on July 22, 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- ^ a b "Amiri Baraka, legendary poet who never abandoned Newark, dead at 79". nj.com. January 9, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
- ^ Sollors, Werner (1978). Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a "Populist Modernism". Columbia University Press.
- ^ Nelson (2000). Anthology of Modern American Poetry. pp. 998–999.
- ^ Harris, William J. (1985). The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic. University of Missouri Press.
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- ^ Watts, Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual, p. 299.
- Up Against the Wall Motherfuckersand used as a slogan by other radical groups.
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- ^ "Poet, Playwright and Political Activist Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) Taught at Stony Brook". Stony Brook University. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
- ^ a b "Judge Delays Ruling for a Month on Sentencing of Imamu Baraka". The New York Times. Associated Press. February 24, 1981.
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- ^ "Names in the News". The Daily Telegraph. December 18, 1981. p. 36.
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- ^ "Metro Briefing: New Jersey: New Brunswick: Conviction In 2 Killings". The New York Times. July 12, 2005. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
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- ^ "Newark: Court Will Not Hear Poet's Lawsuit". The New York Times. Associated Press. November 14, 2007. Retrieved November 26, 2007.
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- ^ Jacobs, Andrew. "Criticized Poet Is Named Laureate of Newark Schools", The New York Times, December 19, 2002. Accessed September 19, 2008. "A longtime Newark resident who was pivotal in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, Mr. Baraka has ignored calls from Gov. James E. McGreevey and others that he resign the post, which pays a stipend of $10,000."
- ^ "Amiri Baraka". Poets.org. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
- ^ a b New Jersey Transit. "Commissioner Fox Unveils New 7th Avenue Concourse at Penn Station N.Y.: Built For Today's Crowds and Tomorrow's Capacity Needs" Archived September 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine (news release) (September 18, 2002). Retrieved July 6, 2013.
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- ^ Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), "Home on the Range and Police (1968)", in Annemarie Bean (ed.), A Sourcebook of African-American Performance: Plays, People Movements, Routledge, 1999, pp. 32–45. ("HOME ON THE RANGE: A play to be performed with the music of Albert Ayler improvised in background. Home on the Range was read as part of the 1967 Black Communications Project, produced at Spirit House in Spring'68, taken on tour by the Spirit House Movers and Players in Boston, and performed at a Town Hall rally, New York, March '68.")
- ^ Strub, Whitney. "Recovering the New-Ark: Amiri Baraka's Lost Chronicle of Black Power in Newark, 1968", Bright Lights Film Journal, April 17, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2013.
- ^ Whitty, Stephen. "Amiri Baraka's lost Newark film, found and coming home" in NJ.com, April 18, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2014.
External links
- Amiri Baraka at IMDb
- Amiri Baraka in the German National Library catalogue
- Amiri Baraka page Archived August 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine at Modern American Poetry
- Interview with Andrea Hiott, Pulse Magazine Berlin
- Site dedicated to Amiri Baraka
- Amiri Baraka Discography Project
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Margalit Fox, "Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79", The New York Times, January 9, 2014
- Obituary in The Independent by Marcus Williamson
- Amiri Baraka interview with J. K. Fowler on The Mantle
- Democracy Now January 10, 2014 Amiri Baraka (1934-2014): Poet-Playwright-Activist Who Shaped Revolutionary Politics, Black Culture
- FBI files on Amiri Baraka at the Internet Archive
- FBI Docs[permanent dead link] Amiri Baraka (Partial) FBI File
- Maria Popova, "Answers in Progress: Amiri Baraka’s Lyrical Manifesto for Life"
- Amiri Baraka video interview at underyourskin on YouTube
- Audio recording of Amiri Baraka poetry reading, September 14, 1992, from Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive
- Finding aid to Amiri Baraka papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
- Finding aid to Beat poets and poetry collection, including Baraka’s The Systems of Dante’s Hell manuscript, at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
- Amiri Baraka collection of playscripts at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
- Amiri Baraka collection of unpublished poetry at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
- Amiri Interviewed in New Jersey Pulse Berlin