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Books by Amiri
Baraka
Tales of the Out &
the Gone
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The Essence of Reparations /
Somebody Blew Up
America & Other Poems
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Blues People
Autobiography
of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka /
Selected Poetry of
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
/
Black Music
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Bio-Sketch
Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey,
USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music
history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary
political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on
cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the
Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Amiri
Baraka Bio /
Amiri Baraka's Website
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We had already lost a great innovator, Lorraine Hansberry, who
flexed the breath we did not even know we had. And she, for all
the ink about Raisin, is still no t fully know n for the power
that followed. “The Drinking Gourd.” Whites in Harlem
do Genet’s “The Blacks” but no one seems willing to do
Lorraine’s power answer “Les Blancs.” How many years
before all of her is known?
And Jimmy Baldwin too, the other explosive
paradigm, who helped set the tone, the direction of The Black
Arts Cultural Revolution with all of his searching works
evaluating sorry America. Blues for Mr Charlie presented the
choice, the gun or the bible he said, one of them gonna work!
And so he was removed from the pantheon of the Colored, OK to
read. No Name In the Street, “Evidence” makes it all
abundantly clear of our protracted struggle as well as the
wooden Negroes barb wiring our path!
A BAM Roll Call
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We know directions. They are wide and bright for
the faintly visionary. They are roads, clearly marked,
if you looking. Like shouted ideologies. Fast and loose,
if you say eat, we have at least, some movement you
know? But then the general directions becomes itself a
randomness, if steps are not firmly placed and some
focus is not brought to bear upon some singular
particular place.
To do is too general. To go is also. To be is
saying nothing. We want to know we must know just what
you are going to do when you get to that exact place you
must get to for that action to have meaning. We need
facts figures precision and skill. It is work and study
that will change the world. The rest is clearly
bullshit.
New Work by Imamu Amiri Baraka
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We always knew the crazy tales our people
told about the vicious madness of White Supremacy, enforced by
Uncle Sam Gestapo Good Old Boy Cracker Nazis, Spawn of the
“Soul Thieves” (Fred said) who bought our bodies to work for
them free, forever, so they could be rich and rule the world.
Sunday School and one people and friends and brains had
told us clearly to recognize:
Heathens, jealous Crackers the old folks called them.
Racists. Lynchers.
The spiritual KKK in America’s soul.
We are its Blood, ourselves. Sucked out of our homes by our African selves as captors,
then sold to vampire-like European and American slaves traders.
They are the meaning of Halloween.
The Skull and Crossbones is their only flag.
From Parks to
Marxism
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Clay, in Dutchman, Ray, in The Toilet, Walker in The
Slave are all victims. In the Western sense they could be
heroes. But the Revolutionary Theatre, even if it is Western,
must be anti-Western. It must show horrible coming attractions
of The Crumbling of The West. Even as Artaud designed The
Conquest of Mexico, so we must design The Conquest of White Eye,
and show the missionaries and wiggly Liberals dying under blasts
of concrete. For sound effects, wild screams of joy, from all
the peoples of the world.
The Revolutionary Theatre must take dreams and give them a
reality. It must isolate the ritual and historical cycles of
reality. But it must be food for all these who need food, and
daring propaganda for the beauty of the Human Mind. But it is a
political theatre, a weapon to help in the slaughter of these
dimwitted fat-bellied white guys who somehow believe that the
rest of the world is here for them to slobber on.
The Revolutionary Theatre
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