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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 ...
Oct 3, 2024 · Amiri Baraka (born October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.—died January 9, 2014, Newark) was an American poet and playwright who published provocative works that assiduously presented the experiences and suppressed anger of Black Americans in a white-dominated society. After attending Rutgers University and then Howard University in the ...
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Poet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University and Howard University, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to New York City to attend Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. Baraka was well known for his stride...
Barakas own political stance changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods: as a member of the avant-garde during the 1950s, Barakawriting as Leroi Joneswas associated with Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; in the 60s, he moved to Harlem and became a Black Nationalist; in the 70s, he was involved in third-world libera...
Baraka incited controversy throughout his career. He was praised for speaking out against oppression as well as accused of fostering hate. Critical opinion has been sharply divided between those who agree, with Dissent contributor Stanley Kaufman, that Barakas race and political moment have created his celebrity, and those who feel that Baraka stan...
Baraka did not always identify with radical politics, nor did his writing always court controversy. During the 1950s Baraka lived in Greenwich Village, befriending Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Frank OHara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. The white avant-gardeprimarily Ginsberg, OHara, and leader of the Black Mountain poets Charles Olsonand Baraka believed in...
Dutchman, a play of entrapment in which a white woman and a middle-class black man both express their murderous hatred on a subway, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1964. While other dramatists of the time were wedded to naturalism, Baraka used symbolism and other experimental techniques to enhance the plays emotional impact. The play establishe...
After Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was killed in 1965, Baraka moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The Black Arts Movement helped develop a new aesthetic for black art and Baraka was its primary theorist. Black American artists should follow black, not white standards of beauty and value, he maintained, and should s...
By the early 1970s Baraka was recognized as an influential African-American writer. Randall noted in Black World that younger black poets Nikki Giovanni and Don L. Lee (later Haki R. Madhubuti) were learning from LeRoi Jones, a man versed in German philosophy, conscious of literary tradition . . . who uses the structure of Dantes Divine Comedy in h...
After coming to see Black Nationalism as a destructive form of racism, Baraka denounced it in 1974 and became a third world socialist. He produced a number of Marxist poetry collections and plays in the 1970s that reflected his newly adopted political goals. Critics contended that works like the essays collected in Daggers and Javelins (1984) lack ...
Baraka was recognized for his work through a PEN/Faulkner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, and the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York. He was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He died in 2014.
Apr 2, 2014 · Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones on October 7, 1934, in Newark, New Jersey. ... Baraka became a Muslim and added the prefix Imamu, meaning "spiritual leader," to his name. In 1974 ...
In 1968, Baraka co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal and his play Home on the Range was performed as a benefit for the Black Panther Party. That same year he became a Muslim, changing his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka. He assumed leadership of his own Black Muslim organization, Kawaida.
A model of the self-made African-American national, poet and propagandist Imamu Amiri Baraka is a leading exponent of black nationalism and latent black talent. Baraka, who was originally named Everett LeRoi Jones, earned a reputation for militancy among radical contemporaries Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and the Black Panthers.
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Oct 27, 2022 · Introduction. Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934–d. 2014) is one of the most important African American artists and intellectuals. He was a poet, critic, essayist, musicologist, playwright, novelist, and brilliant polemicist who sought to expose through his work the historical ravages of racism and oppression.
