Baraka, Amiri

By: Henry C. Lacey

Source:

 The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature

Baraka, Amiri

Sex:  Male

Born:  Newark, New Jersey, United States
7 October 1934

Activity/Profession:  Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Anthologist, Political Activist

(b. 1934), poet, playwright, essayist, activist, lecturer, novelist, editor, anthologist, and director.

One of the most influential and prolific African American writers of the twentieth century, Amiri Baraka first came to the attention of readers and critics as LeRoi Jones. He was born Everett LeRoy Jones on 7 October 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. His solidly middle-class upbringing figures prominently in his creative work and must be considered one of the major distinguishing features in any comparative treatment of Baraka and other seminal African American literary artists. The son of postal employee Coyt LeRoy Jones and social worker Anna Lois (Russ) Jones, Baraka articulates the angst of the African American middle class with unsurpassed effect in works from every phase of his artistic development. This concern is most apparent in such relatively early works as the Beat-inspired Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note (1961), the theatrical triumph Dutchman (1964), the barometric essays collected in Home: Social Essays (1966), and The System of Dante's Hell (1965), Baraka's only attempt at the novel. Although completed at a relatively early point in the artist's development, these works evidence the writer's protracted struggle with the issues of racial identity and artistic responsibility, the two concerns that have remained his most dominant themes over the years.

Baraka attended the public schools of Newark, New Jersey, Rutgers University, and Howard University. On leaving Howard University, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Upon his discharge, he settled in New York City, studied comparative literature at Columbia University, and began to cultivate strong relationships with a number of avant garde artists on the Lower East Side of New York City. In association with his first wife, Hettie (Cohen) Jones, whom he married in 1958, Baraka edited the journal Yugen, which was dedicated to the publication of works by struggling East Village writers. Around this time, he also served as coeditor of Floating Bear, an underground literary newsletter. Moreover, he and Diane di Prima cofounded the American Theater for Poets in 1961. This experimental dramatic troupe, too, was primarily concerned with presenting the works of lesser-known local writers.

Generally recognized as a “mover and shaker” on the Lower East Side art scene, Baraka quickly earned the respect of artists of all mediums, particularly the writers of the so-called Beatnik movement. His emergence as a personality and leader among this group is reflected in a 1964 feature article entitled “King of the East Village,” which appeared in the New York Herald Tribune. His stature was further enhanced with the publication of his first collection of poems, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, and two early dramatic works, The Baptism and The Toilet (both jointly published in 1967, but performed in 1964 and 1961, respectively).

Although it appeared well past the zenith of the Beat movement, Preface is most representative of the literature produced by the more characteristic Beat writers. Reflecting scorn for convention, pretence, and materialism, the poems share also the brooding, self-deprecating tone of these artists. While the two plays of this period are strikingly different in mode of presentation-The Baptism, a highly experimental, absurdist effort, and The Toilet, a markedly naturalistic work-they too evidence notable Beat tendencies. In both plays, homosexual characters figure prominently as symbols of openness and tolerance, direly needed qualities in the convention-bound, excessively prohibitive straight world.

Despite the clarity of Baraka's Beat-inspired criticism of society, however, the works from this period of the writer's development reflect, paradoxically, a growing unease with the very culture from which they emerge. This is most profoundly felt in the works of Preface, which posit a poignant dissatisfaction with the essentially apolitical protestations of the Beats. These poems are most notable in their expressions of concern with the poetic process and with questions of audience and artistic engagement. The author's employment of the racial theme in a number of the poems is indicative of his attempts to effect a reconciliation of his art with his emerging political activism. Examination of Baraka's essays from this period, works that later found their way into Home: Social Essays, reveals the depth of his thought on these issues at the time.

The various essays of Home: Social Essays, originally published in a number of liberal and leftist journals, present a record of Baraka's artistic transformation from black Beat poet to “Father of the Black Arts movement.” Becoming increasingly involved in political and artistic pursuits that took him beyond the confines of the Lower East Side, he shows in these essays an intense disaffection for liberalism, the gradualism of the civil rights movement, all manifestations of cultural shame, and assimilationist behavior by African Americans.

Despite his growing attraction to direct political action and racial concerns (as evidenced in his membership in such Harlem-based groups as the militant “On Guard for Freedom Committee” in 1961), Baraka was still very much involved with the Beat coterie during the writing of many of the aforementioned essays. His poems continued to appear in publications edited and supported by this group. Moreover, his first published fictional efforts appeared during this period in these same journals. Of particular significance was the appearance of The System of Dante's Hell (1965), Baraka's only novel. The author's final triumph, however, as denizen of the Lower East Side, was the explosive drama Dutchman (1964). Along with the poems of The Dead Lecturer (1964), these works reflect the tremendous psychological tension experienced by the artist during this phase of his development. Informed by an increasingly African American frame of reference, they represent, to a great extent, the artist's attempts to rationalize his new posture.

The poems of The Dead Lecturer represent Baraka's farewell to the closed, apolitical circle of Beat peers. Marked by an ever-increasing preoccupation with racial concerns, these lyrics evince the artist's crystallization of his commitment to revolutionary action and his disavowal of what he perceives to be the apolitical decadence of former compatriots. In withering attacks on his “friends,” the poet shows impatience with the life of reflection and dead-end intellectualism. Manifesting his sense of guilt for not being more actively involved in the rapidly expanding black liberation movement, he frequently invokes the prodigal theme in the poems of The Dead Lecturer and the essays of Home.

The poems and essays of these early works are also characterized by Baraka's commitment to the articulation of a Black Aesthetic. Poems such as “Black Dada Nihilismus”, “Crow Jane”, and “Rhythm and Blues 1 (for Robert Williams in Exile)” must be viewed as the lyrical equivalents to such essays as “LeRoi Jones Talking”, “A Dark Bag”, and “The Revolutionary Theater”.

The dramatic works Dutchman and The Slave (1964) should be seen as highly representative of this transitional period in Baraka's artistic development. Poets and marginal men, the heroes of both works give voice to many of the sentiments expressed in the poetry and prose of this period. Both Clay of Dutchman and Walker Vessels of The Slave are shown wrestling with the demons of self-denial that Baraka himself was attempting to eradicate between the years 1961 and 1965. C. W. E. Bigsby offers, in The Second Black Renaissance: Essays in Black Literature (1980), some of the most perceptive critical commentary available on these two works. Writing of Dutchman, he notes, “[It] remains one of the best plays ever written by a black author and one of the most impressive works of recent American theater…. At its heart is a consideration of the artistic process, a debate over the legitimacy of sublimating social anguish into aesthetic form.” In his treatment of The Slave, he refers to the drama as “a personal act of exorcism,” a description that could serve as well in discussion of most of the works of this phase of Baraka's artistic and personal development.

Baraka's espousal of a thoroughly political, race-conscious art was given dramatic emphasis by the continued shifting of his base of activities from the Lower East Side to Harlem. His involvement with the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School, located in Harlem, provided him with a base and a vehicle to test the aesthetic theories of the emerging cultural nationalist. Formally opened in early 1965, the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School was of critical importance in the development of the Black Arts movement of the later 1960s and early 1970s. Describing its programmatic thrust and strict adherence to the ideas put forth by Baraka, Larry Neal noted, “the Black Arts Theater took its programs into the streets of Harlem. For three months, the theater presented plays, concerts, and poetry readings to the people of the community. Plays that shattered the illusions of the American body politic, and awakened Black people to the meaning of their lives” (“The Black Arts Movement,” Drama Review, Summer 1968). Although short-lived, the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School's influence was widespread. Groups fashioned in its image sprang up throughout the country, and Baraka, its chief architect, was generally recognized as a seminal influence and leader.

Following the demise of the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School, Baraka returned to his hometown of Newark, New Jersey, to continue the work begun in Harlem. In doing so, he established Spirit House and its troupe of actors, called the Spirit House Movers. He also exercised his political acumen by organizing and leading the Black Community Development and Defense Organization, which proved to be an effective force in advancing the cause of Newark's African American community.

It was during this period that the writer changed his name. Having become a proponent of the Kawaida faith, a hybridization of orthodox Islam and traditional African practices, he became Ameer Baraka (“blessed Prince”). Taking on the role of priest in his growing commune, he added the title Imamu (“spiritual Leader”) and changed “Ameer” to “Amiri,” with no change in its regal connotation. He later dropped the title Imamu.

The poems, plays, and essays of the committed cultural nationalist are characterized by a markedly hortatory or didactic manner. Directed to an African American audience, they were intended to “raise the consciousness” of a divided and debased people. Baraka exerted tremendous influence on a generation of young African American writers during this period. Haki Madhubuti (formerly Don L. Lee), Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez are only a few of the younger writers who attracted the attention of readers and listeners as disciples of Baraka.

The poems of Black Magic: Collected Poetry, 1961–1967 (1969), It's Nation Time (1970), and In Our Terribleness (1970) are typical of the verse produced by cultural nationalist, poet/priest Baraka. Black Magic contains a number of poems that reflect the self-accusatory, brooding tone of the Beat and post-Beat periods. However, the latter works more frequently evidence the assured exhortations of the committed revolutionary. Moreover, these efforts are marked by an increase in the use of the language of the streets and black oral modes. In poems such as “Black Art,” Baraka also continues the formulation of prescriptive artistic manifestos begun in the essays of Home. Like the play, the poem must be put to revolutionary use.

The dramatic works produced in this phase of Baraka's development show an extremely conscious employment of what is, perhaps, best described as the allegorical-didactic technique of medieval drama. Such an approach was logical for the playwright desirous of reaching, and teaching, a largely unlettered audience, hence, such plays as Experimental Death Unit #1, Madheart, and Great Goodness of Life, all published in Four Black Revolutionary Plays (1969). It should be noted, however, that Baraka, the avant garde dramatist, is also in evidence here. In addition to the stylized devices of medieval drama, the plays abound with expressionistic techniques. Moreover, Baraka produces what is arguably his most innovative and challenging drama, Slave Ship: An Historical Pageant (1967), a moving example of “environmental” or “living” theater, during this phase of his development.

During the early 1970s, Baraka played key roles in the organization of such major African American political conferences as the Pan African Congress of African Peoples in Atlanta (1972) and the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana (1974). Around this same time, he made another dramatic ideological shift by announcing his formal adoption of a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Rejecting a narrowly prescribed cultural nationalism, he notes, in one of his earliest statements from this period (“The Congress of Afrikan People: A Position Paper”, Black Scholar, Jan./Feb. 1975), “Nationalism is backward when it says we cannot utilize the revolutionary experience of the world… the theories and experience of men like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung… Fidel Castro… to utilize all this revolutionary experience and revolutionary theory, by integrating it with the concrete practice of the black liberation movement.” With publication of such work as Hard Facts (1975), Poetry for the Advanced (1979), and Daggers and Javelins (1984), Baraka has continued his efforts to reconcile the more positive or useful aspects of cultural nationalism with the scientific accuracy of Marxism. As with his earlier works, the critical reception has been mixed.

Baraka continued his productivity with a series of works in the 1990s. He published Eulogies (1996), Funk love: New Poems, 1984–1995 (1996), and The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1997). Scholarly interest in his poetry and essays continued as well. Paul Vangelisti edited Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1961–1995) (1995), and two of Baraka's most well known works, Black Music and Home: Social Essays, were reissued in 1998.

Amiri Baraka's example is in many ways emblematic of the collective experience of African Americans since the momentous decade of the 1960s. His spiritual and artistic journey reflects, in microcosm and, to be sure, in the extreme, the movement from doubt to self-assurance, from self-contempt to self-acceptance. Moreover, in his more recent disavowal of the confining dictums of cultural nationalism, we see a suggestion of the larger African American community's movement toward greater openness to diversity and cross-cultural collaboration. Baraka's greatest contribution, however, lies in his tremendous influence on the direction of post-1960s African American writing. In encouraging a generation of writers to use, confidently and unapologetically, their own rich African American cultural heritage as well as experimental modes of presentation, he proved himself a key facilitator in the maturation of a good number of innovative young artists. By freeing these aspiring writers from all vestiges of cultural shame and the lock-step realistic/naturalistic mode, he contributed immeasurably to African American literature specifically and American literature in general.

[See also Literary History, article on Late Twentieth Century.]

processed xml | source xml