Amiri Baraka - Free Library Land Online - Reference https://reference.library.land/ ru Amiri Baraka - Free Library Land Online - Reference DataLife Engine The System of Dante's Hell https://reference.library.land/amiri-baraka/97750-the_system_of_dantes_hell.html https://reference.library.land/amiri-baraka/97750-the_system_of_dantes_hell.html The System of Dante's Hell
"Much of the novel is an expression of the intellectual and moral lost motion of the age...the special agony of the American Negro."
—New York Times Book Review
"A fevered and impressionistic riff on the struggles of blacks in the urban North and rural South, as told through the prism of The Inferno....Other writers addressed race more directly, but for all its linguistic slipperiness, Baraka's language conveys the feelings of fear, violation, and fury with a surprising potency. A pungent and lyrical portrait of mid-'60s black protest."
—Kirkus Reviews
With a new introduction by Woodie King Jr.
This 1965 novel is a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, structured on the themes of Dante's Inferno: violence, incontinence, fraud, treachery. With a poet's skill Baraka creates the atmosphere of hell, and with dramatic power he reconstructs the brutality of the black slums of Newark, a small Southern town,...]]> Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:22:37 +0200 The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones https://reference.library.land/amiri-baraka/94151-the_autobiography_of_leroi_jones.html https://reference.library.land/amiri-baraka/94151-the_autobiography_of_leroi_jones.html The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones
The complete autobiography of a literary legend.

Amazon.com Review

First published in 1984, this is a revised edition of The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, which includes the original text (restored by the author) as well as a new introduction. Born Leroi Jones in 1934--he became Amiri Baraka in the mid-1960s---he is one of the seminal figures of contemporary black writing, a poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and political activist. Even more than those labels indicate, however, Baraka has been at the heart of literary and ideological ferment since the 1950s. Early in his career, he was strongly influenced by the Beats. During the cultural upheaval of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, he moved uptown to Harlem, changed his name, and embraced a religion that was a hybrid of Islam and traditional African principles. And then, in the 1970s, Baraka turned his back on Black Nationalism and embraced Marxist Leninism. The autobiography, written in Baraka's inimitable style, one that we might call word-jazz, ends there.

From Library Journal

Although this edition of Baraka's autobiography restores substantial cuts made to the original Freundlich Books publication (LJ 1/84), the basic structure of the work remains unchanged: it covers Baraka's youth in Newark, stint in the air force, Beat years in Greenwich Village, role in the Black Arts movement, and conversion from black nationalism to communism around 1974. It is puzzling that this edition continues to disguise key people and publications. For instance, Baraka refers to his ex-wife, Hettie Cohen, as Nellie Kohn; poet Diane DiPrima as Lucia DiBella; and the Partisan Review as the Sectarian Review. What purpose can this obfuscation serve when How I Became Hettie Jones (LJ 2/15/90) has already named names? It will be interesting to see how DiPrima's forthcoming autobiography deals with the same scene. Recommended for libraries lacking the earlier edition.?William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib.,
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