Amiri Baraka Table

Books by Amiri Baraka

Tales of the Out & the Gone / The Essence of Reparations / Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems / Blues People

Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka / Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones / Black Music

* * * * *

Bio-Sketch

Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Amiri Baraka Bio / Amiri Baraka's Website

* * * * *

We always knew the crazy tales our people told about the vicious madness of White Supremacy, enforced by Uncle Sam Gestapo Good Old Boy Cracker Nazis, Spawn of the “Soul Thieves” (Fred said) who bought our bodies to work for them free, forever, so they could be rich and rule the world. Sunday School and one people and friends and brains had told us clearly to recognize: Heathens, jealous Crackers the old folks called them. Racists. Lynchers. The spiritual KKK in America’s soul.

We are its Blood, ourselves. Sucked out of our homes by our African selves as captors, then sold to vampire-like European and American slaves traders. They are the meaning of Halloween. The Skull and Crossbones is their only flag. From Parks to Marxism

* * * * *

The Amiri Baraka Discography Project—This site is dedicated to the jazz-related work of Amiri Baraka, writer, essayist and activist par excellence who brings words and jazz together like no other person. In the liner notes to his India Navigation LP, Baraka called the style "poetrymusic." http://www.amirimusic.com/

* * * * *

Table

Essays & Poems

Amiri Baraka Bio

A BAM Roll Call (essay)

Baraka: Act Like We Know

Battle Is On

Black Art (poem)

Black Dada Nihilimus (poem)

Forward Is Where We Have to Go

From Parks to Marxism A Political Evolution (essay)

New Work by Baraka (Black World, 1973)

The Parade of Anti Obama Rascals

A Plea for Ras Baraka

The Revolutionary Theatre (essay)

Slo Dance Introduction

Somebody Blew Up America (poem) Audio

Something in the Way of Things (In Town) (poem)

Will Not Apologize, Will Not Resign (letter)

Books:

Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (Review, Lewis)

Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (Review)

Black Music

Blues People

The Essence of Reparations (Review)

Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones

Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems (Review)

Tales of the Out & the Gone (Review)

About & For Baraka

Baraka's Daughter Killed

Black Man as Victim (Review of Dutchman and Toilet)

Climbing Malcolm's Ladder

For Baraka (Jamie Walker)

Home Going Celebration

LeRoi Jones: Pursued by Furies (Review of Home on the Range)

Praise & Support of Baraka (Jamie Walker)

Remembering Shani Baraka

Review of Essence of Reparations

* * * * *

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Amiri Baraka (video)

* * * * *

We had already lost a great innovator, Lorraine Hansberry, who flexed the breath we did not even know we had. And she, for all the ink about Raisin, is still no t fully know n for the power that followed. “The Drinking Gourd.” Whites in Harlem do Genet’s “The Blacks” but no one seems willing to do Lorraine’s power answer “Les Blancs.” How many years before all of her is known?

And Jimmy Baldwin too, the other explosive paradigm, who helped set the tone, the direction of The Black Arts Cultural Revolution with all of his searching works evaluating sorry America. Blues for Mr Charlie presented the choice, the gun or the bible he said, one of them gonna work! And so he was removed from the pantheon of the Colored, OK to read. No Name In the Street, “Evidence” makes it all abundantly clear of our protracted struggle as well as the wooden Negroes barb wiring our path! A BAM Roll Call

* * * * *

We know directions. They are wide and bright for the faintly visionary. They are roads, clearly marked, if you looking. Like shouted ideologies. Fast and loose, if you say eat, we have at least, some movement you know? But then the general directions becomes itself a randomness, if steps are not firmly placed and some focus is not brought to bear upon some singular particular place.

To do is too general. To go is also. To be is saying nothing. We want to know we must know just what you are going to do when you get to that exact place you must get to for that action to have meaning. We need facts figures precision and skill. It is work and study that will change the world. The rest is clearly bullshit. New Work by Imamu Amiri Baraka

* * * * *

Clay, in Dutchman, Ray, in The Toilet, Walker in The Slave are all victims. In the Western sense they could be heroes. But the Revolutionary Theatre, even if it is Western, must be anti-Western. It must show horrible coming attractions of The Crumbling of The West. Even as Artaud designed The Conquest of Mexico, so we must design The Conquest of White Eye, and show the missionaries and wiggly Liberals dying under blasts of concrete. For sound effects, wild screams of joy, from all the peoples of the world.

The Revolutionary Theatre must take dreams and give them a reality. It must isolate the ritual and historical cycles of reality. But it must be food for all these who need food, and daring propaganda for the beauty of the Human Mind. But it is a political theatre, a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dimwitted fat-bellied white guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is here for them to slobber on. The Revolutionary Theatre

* * * * *

Related Files:

African Renaissance (Nkrumah)

African Renaissance (Journal)

The African World

Amistad 2

Anthologies: New Negro Poets U.S.A. Black Fire The Black Poets

Drumvoices Black Nationalism in America 360° A Revolution of Black Poets

Ashanti Chronology

Ashanti Empire

Askia Muhammad Touré

Black Arts and Black Power Figures