1 Amiri Baraka Early life 1934–1965

CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….
Chapter I………………………………………………………………….

1.1. Amiri Baraka Early life (1934–1965……………4

1.2. Amiri Baraka ………………..8

Chapter II.
2.1. Imamu Amiri Baraka…………………. 14
2.2. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)………………………………………………….18
Conclusion………………………………………………………………21
Used literature……………………………………………………………22

INTRODUCTION
"Leroi Jones" redirects here. For other people with similar names, see Leroy Jones (disambiguation).
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka,^[1] was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.^[5]
Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature.^[6] Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some compare Baraka to James Baldwin and recognize him as one of the most respected and most widely published black writers of his generation.^[7] Others have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, and homophobia.^[8] Regardless of one's viewpoint, Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.^[9]
Baraka's brief tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (in 2002 and 2003) involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?", which resulted in accusations of antisemitism and negative attention from critics and politicians.
Despite numerous controversies and polarizing content of his work, Baraka's literary influence is undeniable. His co-founding of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s promoted a uniquely black nationalist perspective and influenced an entire literary generation.^[83] Critic Naila Keleta-Mae argues that Baraka's legacy is one of "saying the unsayable", a course that likely damaged his own literary reputation and canonization.^[84] For example, Baraka was left out of the 2013 anthology Angles of Ascent, a collection of contemporary African American poetry published by Norton. In a review of the anthology, Baraka, himself, criticized editor Charles H. Rowell's hostility towards the Black Arts Movement, calling Rowell's "attempt to analyze and even compartmentalize" contemporary African American poetry as "flawed".^[85] Indeed, Rowell's introduction to Angles of Ascent references the "fetters of narrow political and social demands that have nothing to do with the production of artistic texts", evincing a political/apolitical dichotomy where the editor considers overly political works of lesser artistic value. Critic Emily Ruth Rutter recognizes the contribution to African American literary studies of Angles of Ascent yet also proposes adding Baraka and others to ensure students do not "unknowingly accept" the notion that Baraka and writers like him were somehow absent from influencing twenty-first century poetry.^[85]
In Rain Taxi, Richard Oyama criticized Baraka's militant aesthetic, writing that Baraka's "career came to represent a cautionary tale of the worst 'tendencies' of the 1960s—the alienating rejections, the fanatical self-righteousness, the impulse toward separatism and Stalinist repression versus multi-racial/class coalition-building ... In the end, Baraka's work suffered because he preferred ideology over art, forgetting the latter outlasts us all."^[86]
Baraka's participation in a diverse array of artistic genres combined with his own social activism allowed him to have a wide range of influence. When discussing his influence in an interview with NPR, Baraka stressed that he had influenced numerous people. When asked what he would write for his own epitaph, he quipped, "We don't know if he ever died",^[83] evincing the personal importance of his own legacy to him. NPR's obituary for Baraka describes the depths of his influence simply: "...throughout his life – the Black Arts Movement never stopped".^[13] Baraka's influence also extends to the publishing world, where some writers credit him with opening doors to white publishing houses which African American writers previously had been unable to access.^[26]

Chapter I

1.