Amiri Baraka (1934- ) – also called Imamu Amiri Baraka – Original name until 1968 Everett LeRoi Jones

American dramatist, poet and novelist, who has explored the experience and anger of African-Americans. Baraka’s writings have been his weapon against racism and later to advocate scientific socialism. Having been converted to the Kewaida sect of the Muslim faith, he assumed the name Imamu Amiri Baraka.

“I am soul in the world: in the world of my soul - the whirled light from the day - the sacked land of my father.”
(from ‘The Invention of Comics’)

Amiri Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey, where his father worked as a postman and lift operator. He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard Universities, leaving without a degree, and at the New School for Social Research. His major fields of study were philosophy and religion. Baraka also served three years in the U.S. Air Force as a gunner. Baraka continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. He has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo.

In 1956 Baraka began his career as a writer, activist, and advocate of black culture and political power. In 1958 he founded Totem Press. In Harlem he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which presented poetry readings, concerts, and produced a number of plays. The theatre was disbanded in 1966 and Baraka set up in Newark the Spirit House, a black community theatre (also known as the Heckalu Community Centre). In 1968 Baraka founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization. He has also been Secretary-General of the National Black Political Assembly and Chairman of the Congress of African People.

Baraka’s first published work was a play, A GOOD GIRL IS HARD TO FIND (1958). In 1961 appeared PREFACE TO A TWENTY VOLUME SUICIDE NOTE, a book of verse with personal and domestic poems. The book was published in an underground series that included work by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Several other collections followed, among them THE DEAD LECTURER (1964), BLACK ART (1966) and BLACK MAGIC (1969). His later collections include IT’S NATION TIME (1970) SPIRIT REACH (1972), HARD FACTS (1977), AM/TRAK (1979), and THOUGHTS FOR YOU! (1984).

In 1964 Baraka had four of his plays produced: THE BAPTISM, THE TOILET, THE SLAVE and THE DUTCHMAN, which received the Off Broadway award for the best American play of 1963-64. It was made into film in 1966, directed by Anthony Harvey, and starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Junior. With this and subsequent plays Baraka became the leading writer of militant black theater. The Dutchman uses the technique of Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty,” making the audience face and examine their prejudices through violence of the dramatic action. Baraka depicted a confrontation between a sadistic white woman, Lula, and a naive black college student, Clay, in a subway car. The underground location of the drama is as mythical, or subconscious, as the title, which refers perhaps to the fate of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail forever – thus similar scenes are repeatedly acted throughout history. “What right do you have to be wearing a three-button suit and striped tie? Your grandfather was a slave, he didn’t go to Harvard,” says Lula. Clay represents an accommodationist, who tries to live and survive in a white controlled society, and he chooses not to murder his tormentor, only to be stabbed to death by her. At the play’s end Lula makes an eye contact with another unsuspecting young black man. “The Dutchman was also, in part, responsible for the growth of a genre of black literature known as the Black Arts movement. Younger black writers, including Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti), Ed Bullins, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, and Larry Neal, soon produced a torrent of black-themed works that sought to establish the artistic validity of African-American cultural idioms and that was often openly antiwhite. … With The Dutchman Baraka opened the doors for black American writers to deal with a broad range of political, racial, and social themes.” (from Chronology of Twentieth-Century History: Arts & Culture, volume II, ed. by Frank N. Magill, 1998)

Baraka’s other plays include A BLACK MASS (1966), based on the Muslim myth of Yacub, THE DEATH OF MALCOLM X (1969), THE MOTION HISTORY (1977), which concluded with the transformation of white oppressors into Marxist co-workers. WHAT WAS THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE LONE RANGER TO THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION? (1978) presented a surrealistic episode using pop culture figures in which a murdering Capitalist exploiter (the Masked Man) provokes a violent worker revolt. In 1965 Baraka made his debut as a novelist with THE SYSTEM OF DANTE’S HELL. It was loosely based on the themes of Dante’s Inferno. Written in the same choppy style as his essays and poems from the 1960s, it gave the effect of a prose poem.

In 1965 Baraka divorced Hettie Cohen, his Jewish wife whom he had married in a Buddhist temple in New York in 1958. They edited in the late 1950s the Yugen magazine which published poetry – Hettie did the pasting up and collating on the kitchen table. Later she specialized in children’s books dealing with black and Native American themes. She has depicted her life with LeRoi Jones in her book of memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones(1990). In 1966 Baraka married a black woman, Sylvia Robinson (later to be called Amina Baraka); they had five children. In 1967 he helped organize a National Black Power Conference and next year he left behind his ‘slave name’, Jones, for a new African identity, Imamu (Swahili, for spiritual leader) Amiri Baraka. With his own conversion to Marxism, Baraka dropped ‘Imamu’ from his name as having ‘bourgeois nationalist’ implications.

Baraka’s works became in the 1960s progressively more radical and involved with issues of racial and national identity. “We must eliminate the white man before we can draw a free breath on this planet,” he once stated. In his early poems Baraka dealt with such subjects as death, suicide and self-hatred, but his view took a new turn and he focused on the separation of the races and political activism. After 1974 his political ideology underwent a change. He abandoned Black Nationalism and embraced Marxist Leninism, supporting the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist system, black or white. As an opponent of the middle-classes, Baraka has criticized among others the likes of James Baldwin to be too ‘hip’. Baraka’s Marxist-Leninist poetry, such as HARD FACTS (1976), is well-crafted and includes some of his best-written work.

Baraka was a teacher at the New School for Social Research, New York (1961-64), a visiting professor at San Francisco State College (1966-67), Yale University, New Haven (1977-78), and George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1978-79). He was an assistant professor (1980-82), an associate professor (1983-84), and since 1985 a professor of African Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Baraka retired in 2000, but he has continued read his poems in jazz sessions – as he has done 40 years. In 2001 Baraka visited Finland where read poems at a jazz evening with Hamiet Bluiett (saxophone), Wilber Morris (bass), and Reggie Nicholson (drums). His first poetry record, BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS, Baraka made in 1964 with the New York Art Quartet. Baraka’s lyrics were provocative in the true spirit of the Dadaist movement, born originally in France in the late 1910s: “nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape / their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats. / Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends /”.

In the 1980s Baraka wrote two librettos, MONEY (1982, with G. Gruntz), and PRIMITIVE WORLD (1984, with D. Murray). His poems show an interest in music, and Baraka has also written many books on the subject (BLACK MUSIC in 1968, THE MUSIC: REFLECTIONS ON JAZZ AND BLUES in 1987). In his short story, ‘The Screamers’ in TALES (1967), Baraka dealt with the galvanizing force of black music upon a black audience. “Poetry is music,” he once said, “and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.” In his youth Baraka practiced piano, trumpet and drums, but found that poetry was a more suitable form of expression for him. His home shows signs of music and African culture everywhere: photographs of the author with the saxophonist John Coltrane, piano which was bought when the singer Nina Simone who lived with the family for a few months, African sculptures, furniture, and textiles.

Baraka continued to write in the 1990s while also teaching at SUNY-Stony Brook. He has edited many anthologies of African-American writing, and has been honored with numerous fellowships, grants, and awards. His political frankness has not become milder, as can be seen in GENERAL HAG’S SKEEZAG (published in Black Thunder, 1992). In 2002 Baraka’s ‘Somebody Blew Up America,’ a Sept. 11 memorial poem, was labelled anti-Semitic. “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed / Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day? / Why did Sharon stay away?” Baraka claimed that the poem was misinterpreted. New Jersey state lawmakers voted in July 2003 to eliminate the position of poet laureate altogether. Much of Baraka’s writings have remained unpublished, or have been printed in small pamphlets. The strength of his work is in its originality and in the attempt to turn from a Western cultural background to a new black aesthetic, flowing from the alternative cultural movements of Africa and America.

For further reading: From LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka by T. Hudson (1973); The Renegade and the Mask by K.B. Benston (1976); Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones: The Question for a ‘Populist Modernism’ by W. Sollors (1978); Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by K. Benston (1978); The Poetry and Politics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic by W.J. Harris (1985); How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones (1990); Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones by Bob Bernotas et al (1991); Conversations With Amiri Baraka, ed. by Charlie Reilly et al. (1994); Contemporary African American Theater by Nilgun Anadolu-Okur (1997); Amiri Baraka by David Bakish (1999, in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin); A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics by Komozi Woodard (1999)

Selected works:

plays: A GOOD GIRL IS HARD TO FIND (1958); DANTE (1961); THE BABTISM (1964); DUTCHMAN (1964); THE SLAVE (1964); THE TOILET (1964); EXPERIMENTAL DEATH UNIT #1 (1965); A BLACK MASS (1966); GREAT GOODNESS OF LIFE (1967); MADHEART (1967); JELLO (1965); ARM YRSELF OR HARM YRSELF (1967); BLACK SPRING (1967); SLAVE SHIP (1967); HOME ON THE RANGE (1968); POLICE (1968); THE DEATH OF MALCOLM X (1969); FOUR BLACK REVOLUTIONARY PLAYS (1969); INSURRECTION (1969); DLOODRITES AND JUNIIES ARE FULL OF (SHHH…) (1970); A FABLE (1971); BA-RA-KA (1972); COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN (1973); A RECENT KILLING (1973); THE NEW ARK’S MOVERIN (1974); THE SIDNEE POET HEROICAL (1975); S-I (1976); THE MOTION OF HISTORY (1977); WHAT WAS THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE LONE RANGER TO THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION? (1979); AT THE DIM’CRACK CONVENTION (1980); BOY AND TARZAN APPEAR IN CLEARING (1981); WEIMAR 2 (1981); MONEY (1982, with G. Gruntz); PRIMITIVE WORLD 1984, with D. Murray); GENERAL HAG’S SKEEZAG (1992)
fiction: SYSTEM OF DANTE’S HELL (1965); TALES (1967); TALES OF THE OUT & THE GONE (2006)
poetry: SPRING AND SOFORTH (1960); PREFACE TO TWENTY VOLUME SUICIDE NOTE (1961); THE DEAD LECTURER (1964); BLACK ART (1966); A POEM FOR BLACK HEARTS (1967); BLACK MAGIC (1969); IN OUR TERRIBLENESS (1970); IT’S NATION TIME (1970); SPIRIT REACH (1972); AFRIKAN REVOLUTION (1973); HARD FACTS (1976); AM/TRAK (1979); SELECTED POETRY (1979); REGGAE OR NOT! (1982); THOUGHTS FOR YOU! (1984); THE LEROI JONES/AMIRI BARAKA READER (1993); TRANSBLUESENCY: THE SELECTED POEMS OF AMIRI BARAKA / LEROI JONES 1961-1995 (1995); EULOGIES (1996); FUNK LORE: NEW POEMS 1984-1995 (1996); SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA & OTHER POEMS (2003)
non-fiction: CUBA LIBRE (1961); BLUES PEOPLE (1963); HOME: SOCIAL ESSAYS (1966); BLACK MUSIC (1968); TRIPPIN’: A NEED FOR CHANGE (1969, with L. Neal and A.B. Spellman); A BLACK VALUE SYSTEM (1970); RAISE RACE RAYS RAZE (1971); STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF AN PAN AFRICAN NATIONALIST PARTY (1971); BEGINNING OF NATIONAL MOVEMENT (1972); KAWAIDA STUDIES: THE NEW NATIONALISM (1972); AFRIKAN FREE SCHOOL (1974); CRISIS IN BOSTON!!!! (1974); NATIONAL LIBERATION AND POLITICS (1974); TOWARD IDEOLOGICAL CLARITY (1974); THE CREATION OF THE NEW ARK (1975); SPRING SONG (1979); DAGGERS AND JAVELINS (1984); THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEROI JONES/AMIRI BARAKA (1984); THE ARTIST AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (1986); THE MUSIC: REFLECTIONS ON JAZZ AND BLUES (1987); A RACE DIVIED (1991); CONVERSATIONS WITH AMIRI BARAKA, ed. by Charlie Reilly and Maya Angelou (1994); THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEROI JONES (1997, rev. edition of The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones, 1984); HOME: SOCIAL ESSAYS (1998, paperback), DIGGING: AFRO AMERICAN BE/AT AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC (1999)
collections: SELECTED PLAYS AND PROSE (1979); THE LEROI JONES / AMIRI BARAKA READER (1987); THE FICTION OF LEROI JONES / AMIRI BARAKA (1999)
ed.: FOR YOUNG LADY POETS (1962); THE MODERNS (1965); BLACK FIRE (1968, with Larry Neal); AFRICAN CONGRESS (1972); THE FLOATING BEAR (1974, with Diane di Prima); confirmation (1983, with Amina Baraka)