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The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
Amiri Baraka - dramatist, poet, essayist, orator, and fiction writer - is one of the preeminent African-American literary figures of our time. The Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader provides the most comprehensive selection of Baraka's work to date, spanning almost 40 years of a brilliant, prolific, and controversial career, in which he has produced more than 12 books of poetry, 26 plays, eight collections of essays and speeches, and two books of fiction. This updated edition contains over 50 pages of previously unpublished work, as well as a chronology and full bibliography.
624 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 1991
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948 people want to read
About the author
Amiri Baraka
157 books401 followersPoems 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 15, 2019
I came for the firebrand poetry, was dazzled by the music criticism, and left fairly appalled by the man's increasing stridency and bitterness. It's hard to escape the fact that for all the passion and brilliance Jones brought to the table, Baraka was super into lecturing African Americans exactly how they needed to live, think, and make their art. And condemning them with the harshest possible racial slurs if they fail to meet his expectations. His vitriol for Spike Lee simply beggars belief... unless you think about how quickly Spike was hailed as a major artist and cultural figure, y'know, the status Baraka failed all his life to achieve. Still love the poetry, though. I put on some Mingus and read it out loud and proud to an imaginary coffee house crowd. Even the "kill Whitey" parts. For whatever reason, I don't take it personally.
September 17, 2007
Amiri Baraka truly astounded me when I discovered him in college. I actually prefer the anger and power of his Amiri Baraka stage over the LeRoi Jones writings. It is a shame he has not received as much acclaim as he deserves. He is not only fascinating as a writer, but as a human in his constant transformation.
July 16, 2007
i really liked when he was leroi jones.
as amiri baraka, he's just okay.
this is a good book to read if you're interested in baraka. it's even handed and gives great examples of his work from all his time periods along with fitting his thoughts together.
as amiri baraka, he's just okay.
this is a good book to read if you're interested in baraka. it's even handed and gives great examples of his work from all his time periods along with fitting his thoughts together.
Read
July 31, 2019This is a great book that is only marred at times by a little too much anger--but the anger is understandable, given the history of race in this country. There are too many good things in the book to be put off by the few things that seem intemperate.
January 13, 2008
Love him or hate him, you can't deny that contemporary American poetry, theater and criticism would be the same without this firebrand.
April 13, 2008
a long view of a turbulent and talented man - the OTHER side of the beats.
March 30, 2009
the best book to get the lowdown on baraka ... revolutionary in thought and action.
February 2, 2014
Amiri Baraka recently died, and I was inspired to look up his plays and poems based on the obituary in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/art... ). I read the play "Dutchman" and was a bit shocked--but I am still thinking about it, and it makes more sense as the events sink in. The marxist poems are best read aloud, like slam poetry, and I quite enjoyed reading some to my husband in the car, particularly, "Am/Trak", "When We'll Worship Jesus," "A New Reality is Better than a New Movie!" and "Why's/Wise." I'm looking forward to reading the play "What was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production?"
Good times.
Good times.
Want to read
February 7, 2013AKA Amiri Baraka
June 9, 2010
diggin' blackness.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews