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Amistad 2
Edited by John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris
Vintage Books, February 1971
Comments about
Amistad 1
The first issue should leave no doubt in anyone's mind
from what sector of American life the most penetrating
thinking and writing is now coming.
Amistad 1
challenges American arts and letters by presenting
alternative interpretations of America and the West,
with particular emphasis in this issue on history and
literature . . .
Amistad 1 has made an exciting
beginning and its impact on college campuses as well as
the white literary and academic establishment should be
profound.
—New York
Times Book Review
A great
many whites will squirm when and if they read the first
issue of
Amistad 1. . . But none can quibble with
the quality of the writing, the varied combination of
fiction and essays and the directness and force with
which major articles fortify the magazine's purpose
—Book
Week
The
Black movement has the shape of a triangle: culture
connected to politics connected to economics. The
editors have wisely chosen a multidisciplinary approach
to their publication. They regard the humanities and
social sciences as the major divisions of the university
that must bear the responsibility for the "inculcation
of intellectual racism."
Amistad 1 can prove no
important force in helping to give shape and definitions
to the seventies. Such a magazine can prove invaluable
to students, teachers, and the writers who will turn to
its pages for publication.
—University
Review
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Amistad 2
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Contents
Blueprint for Negro Literature
2
Richard
Wright
The
Lyrics of James Brown: Ain’t It Funky
Now,
Or Money
Won’t Change Your Licking Stick
21
Mel Watkins
The
Bluest Eye fiction
65
Toni
Morrison
Rappin’
With Myself 97
John Oliver
Killens
The
Return: A Fantasy fiction
137
Gayl Jones
The White
Masters of the World
169
W.E.B.
DuBois
Commuting
fiction 201
Paul Good
Africa
Recolonized? 229
Basil
Davidson
Twilight
of Our Past: Reflections on the Origins of
Black History 261
Sterling
Stuckey
From A Black
Perspective: The Poetry of Don L. Lee
297
Paula
Giddings
Technology & Ethos
319
Imamu Amiri
Baraka
A
Portfolio of Photographs
323
Carl Van Vechten |
posted 11
September 2006
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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Incognegro: A Memoir of
Exile and Apartheid
By Frank B. Wilderson, III
Wilderson, a professor,
writer and filmmaker from
the Midwest,
presents a gripping account
of his role in the downfall
of South African apartheid
as one of only two black
Americans in the African
National Congress (ANC).
After marrying a South
African law student, Wilderson reluctantly
returns with her to South
Africa in the early 1990s,
where he teaches
Johannesburg and Soweto
students, and soon joins the
military wing of the ANC.
Wilderson's stinging
portrait of Nelson Mandela
as a petulant elder eager to
accommodate his white
countrymen will jolt readers
who've accepted the
reverential treatment
usually accorded him. After
the assassination of
Mandela's rival, South
African Communist Party
leader Chris Hani, Mandela's
regime deems Wilderson's
public questions a threat to
national security; soon,
having lost his stomach for
the cause, he returns to
America.
Wilderson has a
distinct, powerful voice and
a strong story that shuffles
between the indignities of
Johannesburg life and his
early years in Minneapolis,
the precocious child of
academics who barely
tolerate his emerging
political consciousness.
Wilderson's observations
about love within and across
the color line and cultural
divides are as provocative
as his politics; despite
some distracting
digressions, this is a
riveting memoir of
apartheid's last days.—Publishers
Weekly
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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