Four Black Revolutionary Plays

by LeRoi Jones

Four one-act Experimental Death Unit #1; A Black Mass; Great Goodness of Life; Madheart. Deal with the Black experience as LeRoi Jones has witnessed it. Written in poetic form.

Genres: Drama, Plays, 20th Century

89 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Now known as Amiri Baraka.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Reviews

[Christian Belanger]

Not Amiri's finest, but the line "Tony Bennett, help us please. Beethoven, Peter Gunn, deliver us in our sterling silver headdresses...oh please deliver us" is an all-timer

[Keren]

Experimental Death Unit I

Really absurd and, thus, interesting. Not for the faint of heart. Definite metaphor but also so real. I'm not sure of the meaning of everything here, but you have two drugged-up white men desperately fighting & killing over a black 'whore' whose magic they cannot resist. Then a group of black soldiers marches by and makes sure the two white men and the black woman are dead.
**

Black Mass

An interesting, heavily metaphorical reworking of Elijah Muhammad's separatist myth about the creation of the white race by an ancient black magician. Several lines in the play made me laugh out loud because I could attribute each sentiment to some people I know but also appreciate the way the myth itself flips the narrative of black people as "animals" or"lesser humans" and depicts white people in that way instead.
****

Great Goodness of Life

Portrays a black & white man accused of harboring a murderer. This "murderer" is blackness. The image of the murderer is an amalgamation of the faces of black men fighting for justice/who have received white man's "justice." The accused is absolved of his "crime" when he accepts his "guilt" and executes a young black "murderer" who calls him Papa.
**

Madheart

Like watching abstract painting brought to life as modern dance--confusing and bizarre. I 'think' that this play is a reaction to attempts by some black people to mitigate their "blackness" and try to conform to white behaviors and cultures, or perhaps this is a reaction to intermarriage between black and white people. I don't know, but the violence was disturbing.
*

[Octavia]

Given to me by a white man who thought I would like it. He was right about this one thing. Amiri bakara is like somehow the enemy of black republicans and hoteps. A trouble to black women. Experimental death unit + great goodness of life > a black mass + madheart. Wasn’t sure what to make of the foreword but I liked the part where they talked about emotional torment at the center of amiri’s drama. As a requisite for coming of age. It’s very clear in Dutchman. That’s interesting in mind with Tod the boy Tod. Black coming of age is very rough brittle painful moment(s) of reckoning as you are made aware of (and perhaps try to kill) the cop inside of you. These examples are not explicit about what that parallel process looks like in black women and girls. The only (non drama) example I can think of is Bree in legendborn who literally has the cop inside her (Arthur) and cannot possibly live with him forever, not if she wants to become a free adult.

[Marc Nash]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ8Ux...

Afrocentric 1960s plays with great stagecraft and imagery and packing powerful punches in each of the 4 20-page long plays

[Desiree]

My first thought upon starting to read this book was that the writing is awful and that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter and may just be because the author, LeRoi Jones, wasn't as experienced as he could've been before publishing his work. Of course, this book was released in the late 60s so that in and of itself is an accomplishment against the expectations of the time, especially considering the subject matter. However, back to the poor writing, I feel like that coupled with the violence and anger (two major elements in all four plays) diminished the actual point of the plays and having them published or perhaps all the author wanted to do was spread his anger.

My first thought upon finishing the book was that, yes, LeRoi Jones was a radical but he was not a revolutionary and to use this word to describe him or his works is to destroy a very powerful and wonderful word and idea. Anger and violence can help fuel a revolution against injustice but you also need intelligence, insight, and a certain amount of compassion, otherwise you're just a violent, angry, and bitter racist person, and, yes, I'm calling him a racist and I also call him sexist and point out how he clearly enjoys the idea of being violent to women of all races.

Now, I am not in any way saying that LeRoi Jones or any person who has experienced extreme racism doesn't have a right to be angry or have violent ideas about those perpetuating hate against an entire race for absolutely no reason. What I'm saying is that there's a difference between self-indulgent violence and anger, which is present throughout LeRoi Jones's work as well as sexism and rampant and violent sexual, physical, and mental abuse against women, and a narrative through which knowledge and understanding can pass through to the reader or audience.

The problem with people who write self-indulgently is that their message is lost upon their intended audience because the intensity of their emotions is akin to punching a brick wall. That kind of violence only comes up against opposition because there's nothing to soften it for absorption so why should the brick wall yield? This is perhaps not the best metaphor but the only one I can think of at this time.

I would only recommend spending time on this if you're studying racism in the 60s and how it affected black artists, otherwise you're just opening your mind up to a lot of anger for no good reason.

[enja reads]

The social issues addressed are important and these plays were written and staged in the 1960s, a time of massive social change. I've read a bit of Amiri Baraka's poetry and "The Dutchman and the Slave" (which is a far better play than any of those contained in this collection). These plays came across as reactionary, and the writing somewhat sophomoric and 1960s-psychedelic, seeming to reduce all sorts of black social problems to issues of race (and more precisely racism by whites). Baraka/Jones' criticisms of white America are not unfounded (he had a right to show righteous indignation, particularly in the turbulent 1960s, with the deaths of many leaders within the Black Community), but it seems he greatly overplays race while significantly downplaying culture and social class (the same could be said of the early Langston Hughes as a poet, though Hughes' views -- like Baraka's later, with his own acceptance of Marxism -- would become more complicated and comprehensive, linking class, culture and race together). Baraka's early works are certainly worth reading, though his philosophy was still evolving at the time.

[Rubayya]

Only read A Black Mass. It was radical and disturbing, but I believe it was meant to be so.