What do you think?
Rate this book
Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic
A comprehensive and inspiring collection of essays by Larry Neal, a founder of the seminal Black Arts Movement
“The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America.”
—Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968
Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical canon and charged Black artists and writers with reshaping artistic traditions according to their own history. As he proclaimed in his essay “The Black Writer’s Role,” written in 1966, “Black writers must listen to the world with their whole selves––their entire bodies. Must make literature move people. Must want to make our people feel, the way our music makes them feel.”
The writer Allie Biswas, who selected the texts Neal wrote from 1964 to 1978 included here, introduces the volume, illuminating the rich and varied context in which he produced his work.
“The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America.”
—Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968
Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical canon and charged Black artists and writers with reshaping artistic traditions according to their own history. As he proclaimed in his essay “The Black Writer’s Role,” written in 1966, “Black writers must listen to the world with their whole selves––their entire bodies. Must make literature move people. Must want to make our people feel, the way our music makes them feel.”
The writer Allie Biswas, who selected the texts Neal wrote from 1964 to 1978 included here, introduces the volume, illuminating the rich and varied context in which he produced his work.
- GenresNonfictionArt
112 pages, Paperback
Published March 12, 2024
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 15, 2026
i'm feeling very conflicted about this book, so i will give it 3 stars for now. the title is appealing: what does a black aesthetic entail? larry neal, who i think we can consider one of the fathers of the black arts movement, reiterates the movement's grounding sentiment that artmaking without the articulation and ethos of a community-centered, black political consciousness - getting rid of "the destruction of the white thing" - is ultimately useless. and i can't say i disagree, but i became more and more confused/puzzled/unsure as the book progressed (progressing with the chronology of neal's formative essays) because he contines to speak of an essential "blackness" and "black aesthetic," but doesn't seem to ever define it solidly. yes, it is absolutely a dismissal of "the white thing," but then how do we cultivate what is "black"?
i'm writing my junior paper largely about blackness and the function of beauty, but it is part of a larger dilemma of how to reckon with representing blackness in popular culture (generally speaking), or rather, what constitutes Black popular culture. what "true" blackness is it we are after? where do we find it outside of ourselves? who or what have we decided is the perfect model of the thing that is black?
questions questions questions.
i do appreciate neal in his insistence on making a black aesthetic a topic to begin with. over the years, he writes multiple essays on this topic, about the necessity of a black aesthetic, driving home, repeating himself, how urgent purposeful black artistry is. through his essays, and specifically the ones addressing/reviewing the work of his black arts movement contemporaries, he also gives the care to black arts that the wider literary public didn't dare to, creating a new form of arts writing/criticism.
eventually and unsurprisingly, neal's masculinist impulse came to the forefront and he sounded like the black panthers who were only concerned with the fate of "the black man." and he also, at points, essentialized african culture for its place in african americans' past, for its "rhythm and spirit" and iconography, which is a harmful narrative about africa and west african culture that i have written about in other places.
i will say there was a short passage i am especially fond of because neal finally makes clear that his inner circle of male black arts movement artists isn't the only model for the black artist, nor is northeastern black culture.
lots of unfinished/brewing thoughts here.
["the function of art is to liberate Man."]
i'm writing my junior paper largely about blackness and the function of beauty, but it is part of a larger dilemma of how to reckon with representing blackness in popular culture (generally speaking), or rather, what constitutes Black popular culture. what "true" blackness is it we are after? where do we find it outside of ourselves? who or what have we decided is the perfect model of the thing that is black?
questions questions questions.
i do appreciate neal in his insistence on making a black aesthetic a topic to begin with. over the years, he writes multiple essays on this topic, about the necessity of a black aesthetic, driving home, repeating himself, how urgent purposeful black artistry is. through his essays, and specifically the ones addressing/reviewing the work of his black arts movement contemporaries, he also gives the care to black arts that the wider literary public didn't dare to, creating a new form of arts writing/criticism.
eventually and unsurprisingly, neal's masculinist impulse came to the forefront and he sounded like the black panthers who were only concerned with the fate of "the black man." and he also, at points, essentialized african culture for its place in african americans' past, for its "rhythm and spirit" and iconography, which is a harmful narrative about africa and west african culture that i have written about in other places.
i will say there was a short passage i am especially fond of because neal finally makes clear that his inner circle of male black arts movement artists isn't the only model for the black artist, nor is northeastern black culture.
lots of unfinished/brewing thoughts here.
["the function of art is to liberate Man."]
February 3, 2026
It’s amazing the synergy across a lot of writers who discuss Black consciousness. If you have any interest in Black art, specifically in the U.S. you have got to read this book. It will put you onto lesser known figures, as well as give you some insightful critiques on the major figures and movements like James Baldwin and the Harlem Renaissance.
November 11, 2024
A fantastic collection of Neal's essays. "Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation" from 1969 as well as his writing on Baldwin and Hurston are standouts.
Read
March 20, 2026amazing book. this read was refreshing, impactful, and from the bottom up. I will be revisiting countless times
April 2, 2026
I will own this book soon. As I aim to understand Black design and aesthetic more for work/personal life, this book is a seminal work that I thoroughly enjoyed digesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews