The African American author Imamu Amiri Baraka (born 1934 as Everett LeRoi Jones) became influential during the 1960s as a spokesperson for radical black literature and theater. Born as Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, on October 30, 1934,...
An influential figure among the literary avant-garde of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Amiri Baraka (known as LeRoi Jones until 1968) has been a seminal force in the development of contemporary...
An influential figure among the literary avant-garde of Greenwich Village and the lower East Side during the late 1950s and early 1950s, Amiri Baraka (known as LeRoi Jones until 1968) has been a seminal force in the development of contemporary...
Writer Amiri Baraka founded the 1960s Black Arts Movement, transforming white, liberal aesthetics into black nationalist poetics and politics. In 1967, he converted to Islam and changed his name from Leroi Jones to Amiri Baraka. His career can be...
Hurst, Henry Allen Baltimore Afro-American 10-22-2004 "Boy, you then ruined my day!" said great poet and essayist Amiri Baraka, annoyed by my late arrival; he welcomed me to his home. An elder and political revolutionary of the Black community, Baraka's life exemplifies the journey...
THE idea for this interview came from Black Renaissance Noire editor, Quincy Troupe. I have had numerous conversations with Amiri Baraka in person and by telephone. Some of the conversations were informal and impromptu interviews just for my own curiosity. I had always toyed...
Before hip hop and Def Poetry Jam there was The Last Poets. Their chapter would fall somewhere between Amiri Baraka and Africa Bambatta in the chronicle of the spoken word. The legendary lyricists shocked young Black America into social consciousness during the civil rights era...
Hyperbolic titles invite dissent. So here’s mine: What makes Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” “the poem that changed America,” as the cover of this essay collection proclaims? Ginsberg might’ve responded by saying, as he did in a 1986 essay included here, that when San Francisco’s City Lights...
In the following interview, conducted in 1982 by D. H. Melhem and Michael Bezdek, Baraka discusses a variety of topics including his upbringing, his work, and his views on art and politics.
In the following excerpt, Brown demonstrates Baraka's poignant use of dramatic form and his careful integration of plot, character, and setting. Brown also comments on Baraka 's manipulation of such traditional forms as the morality play to criticize conventional social structures, values, and beliefs.
