Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing

by Amiri Baraka (Editor), Larry Neal (Editor)

The defining work of the Black Arts Movement, Black Fire is at once a rich anthology and an extraordinary source document. Nearly 200 selections, including poetry, essays, short stories, and plays, from over 75 cultural critics, writers, and political leaders, capture the social and cultural turmoil of the 1960s. In his new introduction, Amiri Baraka reflects — nearly four decades later — on both the movement and the book.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, African American, History, Literature, African American Literature, Anthologies

680 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2007

About the author

Poems and plays, such as Dutchman (1964), of American writer Amiri Baraka originally Everett LeRoi Jones focus on racial conflict.

He attended Barringer high school. Coyt Leverette Jones, his father, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. Anna Lois Russ Jones, his mother, worked as a social worker.

He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. An anonymous letter accused him as a Communist to his commanding officer and led to the discovery of Soviet literature; afterward, people put Jones on gardening duty and gave him a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty.

In the same year, he moved to Greenwich Village and worked initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began in this period. At the same time, he came into contact with Beat Generation, black mountain college, and New York School. In 1958, he married Hettie Cohen and founded Totem Press, which published such Beat Generation icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Jones in July 1960 visited with a delegation of Cuba committee and reported his impressions in his essay Cuba libre . He began a politically active art. In 1961, he published Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note , a first book. In 1963, Blues People: Negro Music in White America of the most influential volumes of criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning free jazz movement, followed. His acclaimed controversy premiered and received an Obie Award in the same year.

After the assassination of Malcolm X (1965), Jones left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem. His controversial revolutionary and then antisemitic.

In 1966, Jones married Sylvia Robinson, his second wife, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka. In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. In 1967, he adopted the African name Imamu Amear Baraka, which he later changed to Amiri Baraka.

In 1968, he was arrested in Newark for allegedly carrying an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the riots of the previous year, and people subsequently sentenced him to three years in prison; shortly afterward, Raymond A. Brown, his defense attorney, convinced an appeals court to reverse the sentence. In that same year, Black Music, his second book of jazz criticism, collected previously published music journalism, including the seminal Apple Cores columns from Down Beat magazine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka penned some similar strongly anti-Jewish articles to the stance at that time of the Nation of Islam to court controversy.

Around 1974, Baraka himself from Black nationalism as a Marxist and a supporter of third-world liberation movements. In 1979, he lectured at Africana studies department of State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1980, he denounced his former anti-Semitic utterances, declaring himself an anti-Zionist.

In 1984, Baraka served as a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure. In 1989, he won a book award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes award.

In 1990, he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 , he served as supporting actor in Bulworth, film of Warren Beatty. In 1996, the red hot organization produced Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip, and Baraka contributed to this acquired immune def

Reviews

[Tony Hynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

When reading this book, I was struck by how much, and how little has changed since it was written. I couldn't help but to compare the BlackLivesMatter movement and the Black Nationalist Movement so eloquently described in this book. The systematic racism spoken of as "screens" still persists today.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a book I have carried around since 1974 when I first read it for an Afro-American Literature Class in College. It was a book that profoundly changed how I saw my country and it was not a pretty picture. I was in college, a naive white girl from Idaho who never met or knew a black person until I was 19. The book contains writings by John Henrik Clarke, Stanley Crouch, Calvin C. Hernton, Gaston Neal, and other prominent black artists and artivists. I had missed a whole, rich sector of America's collective quilt of people. The writings in this book are powerful and beautiful, if at times painful to read. It is one of three books on African-Americans that provide a picture of a past we must keep moving away from. This, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, and for me, anything by Toni Morrison provide valuable insights we all should read.

[Pres. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. Like a black American Bible of sorts. All Ima say. Wow

[Muhammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't write a better review for this than the Foreward which is included in the volume by the compiler and editor, Amiri Baraka.

"These are the founding Fathers and Mothers, of our nation. We rise, as we rise (again). By the power of our beliefs, by the purity and strength of our actions.

These are the wizards, the bards, the babalawo, the shaikhs, of Weusi Mchoro. These descriptions will be carried for the next thousand years, of good, and of evil. These will be the standards black men make reference to for the next thousand years. These the sources, and the constant conscious striving (jihad) of a nation coming back into focus.

Throw off the blinds from your eyes
the metal pillars of Shaitan from your minds
Find the will of the creator yourself where it was
Sun being eating of the good things

We are being good. We are the beings of goodness, again. We will be righteous and our creations good and strong and righteous, and teaching. The teaching and the descriptions. The will and the strength. Songs, chants, "bad shit goin down," rendered as the light beam of God warms your hearts forever. Forget, and reget. Reget and forget. Where it was. This is the source. Kitab Sudan. The black man's comfort and guide. Where we was we will be agin. Tho the map be broke and thorny tho the wimmens sell they men, then cry up hell to get them back out here agin. In the middle of my life. In the middle of our dreams. The black artist. The black man. The holy holy black man. The man you seek. The climber the striver. The maker of peace. The lover. The warrior. We are they whom you seek. Look in. Find yr self. Find the being, the speaker. The voice, the back dust hover in your soft eyeclosings. Is you. Is the creator. Is nothing. Plus or minus, you vehicle! We are presenting. Your various selves. We are presenting, from God, a tone, your own. Go on. Now."

Alhamdulillah

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't have the time to finish the whole anthology, but I read a lot of the poetry and all the essays. Anthology seems to be the wrong word for this collection, because anthology has the connotation of chopped-up novel excerpts and short stories cobbled together by pretentious, wrinkly academics obsessed with what one "should" read. Black Fire doesn't fit nicely into the picture with its unapologetic passion, anger, and pride. A great place for anyone to start learning from the Black Arts Movement.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should come w/ a disclaimer: not for the faint of heart or those easily offended. But it's a great snapshot of life in the late 1960s, and a really telling example of the frustrations people felt. I would add a personal note, that a history lesson may be needed to really get the context of the literature.

[Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an almost unexplainable phenonmenon. for anyone interested in the frustration and anger of the 60s, this is the book for you. Baraka and the writers in here played NO games. No sir! It is a bit compicated for a first time reader, so take your time.

[Gabriel J. Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding, informative, interesting book; featuring the essays, poems, short fiction, and drama of dozens of Afro-American writers.

[Lola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bible.

[Seven · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the editors was Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, need i say more?

[Laurel]

to read all of "malcolm" by welton smith