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| the autobiography of leroi jones: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones Amiri Baraka, 2012-04-01 The complete autobiography of a literary legend. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka, 1984 This prose-poem styled memoir of poet, novelist, playwright and black activist delineates the politics and the personal drama of the man who has dared face injustice with violence and flaunted his pride in black chauvinism. Chronicling the first forty years of his life, the book tells how Jones/Baraka comes into being from his middle-class roots in Newark, and how his journey through Howard University, the Air Force, beat Greenwich Village, incendiary Harlem, polemic Newark and the caverns of his own heart dictated his reaction to a racist society and etched the nuances of his soul. His testimony is an unreplicable view of the recent struggles of black Americans and the society which they have confronted. ISBN 0-88191-000-7 : $16.95. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Tales of the Out & the Gone Amiri Baraka, 2009-12-01 Controversial literary legend Amiri Baraka's new short story collection will shock and awe. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Digging Amiri Baraka, 2009-05-26 For almost half a century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the most important commentators on African American music and culture. In this brilliant assemblage of his writings on music, the first such collection in nearly twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography, history, musical analysis, and political commentary to recall the sounds, people, times, and places he's encountered. As in his earlier classics, Blues People and Black Music, Baraka offers essays on the famous—Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane—and on those whose names are known mainly by jazz aficionados—Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style, with its deep roots in poetry, makes palpable his love and respect for his jazz musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm show us again how much Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers mattered. He brings home to us how music itself matters, and how musicians carry and extend that knowledge from generation to generation, providing us, their listeners, with a sense of meaning and belonging. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: How I Became Hettie Jones Hettie Jones, 1997 Hettie Jones presents an intimate memoir of her life--from her middle-class Jewish family in Queens to her marriage to the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones and her search for her own artistic voice. Infused with the passion of the late 1950s and early 1960s, this memoir is a deeply moving look at the spirit of the artist and the birth of an era. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Razor Amiri Baraka, 2012 Intended to cut clean through the oppression imposed upon the mainstream by society's intellectual superstructure, this collection of revolutionary essays by literary and cultural legend Amiri Baraka raises numerous issues concerning contemporary African American life. The socially conscious will appreciate the creative analyses and stimulating critiques on display here, buoyed by Baraka's distinctive, bold, and aggressive opinions about the ways our culture bestows ignorance upon the ignorant merely to exploit them. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones Imamu Amiri Baraka, 1984 |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Black Fire Imamu Amiri Baraka, 1971 |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: A Nation within a Nation Komozi Woodard, 2005-10-12 Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is best known as one of the African American writers who helped ignite the Black Arts Movement. This book examines Baraka's cultural approach to Black Power politics and explores his role in the phenomenal spread of black nationalism in the urban centers of late-twentieth-century America, including his part in the election of black public officials, his leadership in the Modern Black Convention Movement, and his work in housing and community development. Komozi Woodard traces Baraka's transformation from poet to political activist, as the rise of the Black Arts Movement pulled him from political obscurity in the Beat circles of Greenwich Village, swept him into the center of the Black Power Movement, and ultimately propelled him into the ranks of black national political leadership. Moving outward from Baraka's personal story, Woodard illuminates the dynamics and remarkable rise of black cultural nationalism with an eye toward the movement's broader context, including the impact of black migrations on urban ethos, the importance of increasing population concentrations of African Americans in the cities, and the effect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the nature of black political mobilization. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Reading Jazz Robert Gottlieb, 2014-02-19 Comprehensive and intelligently organized. . . . Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place.--The New York Times Book Review Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music, as well as the passionate debates it has stirred, more vividly than any other jazz anthology to date.--Chicago Tribune No musical idiom has inspired more fine writing than jazz, and nowhere has that writing been presented with greater comprehensiveness and taste than in this glorious collection. In Reading Jazz, editor Robert Gottlieb combs through eighty years of autobiography, reportage, and criticism by the music's greatest players, commentators, and fans to create what is at once a monumental tapestry of jazz history and testimony to the elegance, vigor, and variety of jazz writing. Here are Jelly Roll Morton, recalling the whorehouse piano players of New Orleans in 1902; Whitney Balliett, profiling clarinetist Pee Wee Russell; poet Philip Larkin, with an eloquently dyspeptic jeremiad against bop. Here, too, are the voices of Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus, Albert Murray and Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Crouch and LeRoi Jones, reminiscing, analyzing, celebrating, and settling scores. For anyone who loves the music--or the music of great prose--Reading Jazz is indispensable. The ideal gift for jazzniks and boppers everywhere. . . . It gathers the best and most varied jazz writing of more than a century.--Sunday Times (London) |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note... LeRoi Jones, 1969 |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: S O S Amiri Baraka, 2014 A New York Times Editors' Choice One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka--whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others (New York Times)--was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka's rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years. Throughout Baraka's career as a prolific writer (also published as LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Amiri Baraka Jerry Watts, 2001-08-01 Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, became known as one of the most militant, anti-white black nationalists of the 1960s Black Power movement. An advocate of Black Cultural Nationalism, Baraka supported the rejection of all things white and western. He helped found and direct the influential Black Arts movement which sought to move black writers away from western aesthetic sensibilities and toward a more complete embrace of the black world. Except perhaps for James Baldwin, no single figure has had more of an impact on black intellectual and artistic life during the last forty years. In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, the first to interweave Baraka's art and political activities, Jerry Watts takes us from his early immersion in the New York scene through the most dynamic period in the life and work of this controversial figure. Watts situates Baraka within the various worlds through which he travelled including Beat Bohemia, Marxist-Leninism, and Black Nationalism. In the process, he convincingly demonstrates how the 25 years between Baraka's emergence in 1960 and his continued influence in the mid-1980s can also be read as a general commentary on the condition of black intellectuals during the same time. Continually using Baraka as the focal point for a broader analysis, Watts illustrates the link between Baraka's life and the lives of other black writers trying to realize their artistic ambitions, and contrasts him with other key political intellectuals of the time. In a chapter sure to prove controversial, Watts links Baraka's famous misogyny to an attempt to bury his own homosexual past. A work of extraordinary breadth, Amira Baraka is a powerful portrait of one man's lifework and the pivotal time it represents in African-American history. Informed by a wealth of original research, it fills a crucial gap in the lively literature on black thought and history and will continue to be a touchstone work for some time to come. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: A Conversation with Ambassador Richard T. Mccormack Richard T. McCormack, 2013-01-25 Ambassador Richard McCormack has spent his career focusing on geopolitics and the global economy. In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Ambassador McCormack served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and as the principal coordinator for the G-7 economic summits. He was awarded the State Departments highest award by thenSecretary of State James A. Baker and also received the French Legion of Honor. He received his Ph.D. magna cum laude from theUniversityofFribourginSwitzerlandand his B.A. fromGeorgetownUniversity. Ambassador McCormack is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations, CSIS, the Economic Club of New York, and other organizations. He has authored numerous publications. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Nigger Dick Gregory, Robert Lipsyte, 2019-06-11 Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory’s million-copy-plus bestselling memoir—now in trade paperback for the first time. “Powerful and ugly and beautiful...a moving story of a man who deeply wants a world without malice and hate and is doing something about it.”—The New York Times Fifty-five years ago, in 1964, an incredibly honest and revealing memoir by one of the America's best-loved comedians and activists, Dick Gregory, was published. With a shocking title and breathtaking writing, Dick Gregory defined a genre and changed the way race was discussed in America. Telling stories that range from his hardscrabble childhood in St. Louis to his pioneering early days as a comedian to his indefatigable activism alongside Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gregory's memoir riveted readers in the sixties. In the years and decades to come, the stories and lessons became more relevant than ever, and the book attained the status of a classic. The book has sold over a million copies and become core text about race relations and civil rights, continuing to inspire readers everywhere with Dick Gregory's incredible story about triumphing over racism and poverty to become an American legend. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Four Lives in the Bebop Business A. B. Spellman, 1985 Score |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: I Was Born a Slave Yuval Taylor, 1999-03-01 Between 1760 and 1902, more than 200 book-length autobiographies of ex-slaves were published; together they form the basis for all subsequent African American literature. I Was Born a Slave collects the 20 most significant &“slave narratives.&” They describe whippings, torture, starvation, resistance, and hairbreadth escapes; slave auctions, kidnappings, and murders; sexual abuse, religious confusion, the struggle of learning to read and write; and the triumphs and difficulties of life as free men and women. Many of the narratives—such as those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs—have achieved reputations as masterpieces; but some of the lesser-known narratives are equally brilliant. This unprecedented anthology presents them unabridged, providing each one with helpful introductions and annotations, to form the most comprehensive volume ever assembled on the lives and writings of the slaves. Volume One (1770-1849) includes the narratives of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), William Grimes, Nat Turner, Charles Ball, Moses Roper, Frederick Douglass, Lewis & Milton Clarke, William Wells Brown, and Josiah Henson. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Dutchman Imamu Amiri Baraka, 1967 |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Painting Below Zero James Rosenquist, David Dalton, 2009-10-27 From James Rosenquist, one of our most iconic pop artists—along with Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein—comes this candid and fascinating memoir. Unlike these artists, Rosenquist often works in three-dimensional forms, with highly dramatic shifts in scale and a far more complex palette, including grisaille and Day-Glo colors. A skilled traditional painter, he avoided the stencils and silk screens of Warhol and Lichtenstein. His vast canvases full of brilliant, surreally juxtaposed images would influence both many of his contemporaries and younger generations, as well as revolutionize twentieth-century painting. Ronsequist writes about growing up in a tight-knit community of Scandinavian farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota in the late 1930s and early 1940s; about his mother, who was not only an amateur painter but, along with his father, a passionate aviator; and about leaving that flat midwestern landscape in 1955 for New York, where he had won a scholarship to the Art Students League. George Grosz, Edwin Dickinson, and Robert Beverly Hale were among his teachers, but his early life was a struggle until he discovered sign painting. He describes days suspended on scaffolding high over Broadway, painting movie or theater billboards, and nights at the Cedar Tavern with Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and the poet LeRoi Jones. His first major studio, on Coenties Slip, was in the thick of the new art world. Among his neighbors were Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and Jack Youngerman, and his mentors Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Rosenquist writes about his shows with the dealers Richard Bellamy, Ileana Sonnabend, and Leo Castelli, and about colorful collectors like Robert and Ethel Scull. We learn about the 1971 car crash that left his wife and son in a coma and his own life and work in shambles, his lobbying—along with Rauschenberg—for artists’ rights in Washington D.C., and how he got his work back on track. With his distinct voice, Roseqnuist writes about the ideas behind some of his major paintings, from the startling revelation that led to his first pop painting, Zone, to his masterpiece, F-III, a stunning critique of war and consumerism, to the cosmic reverie of Star Thief. This is James Rosenquist’s story in his own words—captivating and unexpected, a unique look inside the contemporary art world in the company of one of its most important painters. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: The Fiction of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka, 2000 For the first time under one cover, then, here is the collected fiction of one of America's greatest writers.--BOOK JACKET. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Miles Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe, 1990-09-15 Miles discusses his life and music from playing trumpet in high school to the new instruments and sounds from the Caribbean. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: The Dead Lecturer Amiri Baraka, 1964 Published under the author's earlier name: LeRoi Jones. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Recollections of My Life as a Woman Diane di Prima, 2002-03-26 In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Father Of The Blues W. C. Handy, 1991-03-22 W. C. Handy's blues—“Memphis Blues, Beale Street Blues, St. Louis Blues—changed America's music forever. In Father of the Blues, Handy presents his own story: a vivid picture of American life now vanished. W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was a sensitive child who loved nature and music; but not until he had won a reputation did his father, a preacher of stern Calvinist faith, forgive him for following the devilish calling of black music and theater. Here Handy tells of this and other struggles: the lot of a black musician with entertainment groups in the turn-of-the-century South; his days in minstrel shows, and then in his own band; how he made his first 100 from Memphis Blues; how his orchestra came to grief with the First World War; his successful career in New York as publisher and song writer; his association with the literati of the Harlem Renaissance.Handy's remarkable tale—pervaded with his unique personality and humor—reveals not only the career of the man who brought the blues to the world's attention, but the whole scope of American music, from the days of the old popular songs of the South, through ragtime to the great era of jazz. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Angela Davis Angela Y. Davis, 2023-05-02 An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend. --Ibram X. Kendi This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis's classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author. I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past. --Angela Y. Davis Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. Davis describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis's autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems Amiri Baraka, 2014 The publication of Amiri Baraka's SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA & OTHER POEMS makes one more mark in the development in modern Black radical & revolutionary cultural reconstruction... Readers of course will want as quick as possible to read for them-self the now controversial title poem..., but check-out, among the others, In Town'--pure-pure dark post-Plantation molasses...--Kamau Brathwaite Poetry. African American Studies. Fifth printing. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: About Chekhov Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, 2007-06-05 Seven years after the death of Anton Chekhov, his sister, Maria, wrote to a friend, You asked for someone who could write a biography of my deceased brother. If you recall, I recommended Iv. Al. Bunin . . . . No one writes better than he; he knew and understood my deceased brother very well; he can go about the endeavor objectively. . . . I repeat, I would very much like this biography to correspond to reality and that it be written by I.A. Bunin. In About Chekhov Ivan Bunin sought to free the writer from limiting political, social, and aesthetic assessments of his life and work, and to present both in a more genuine, insightful, and personal way. Editor and translator Thomas Gaiton Marullo subtitles About Chekhov The Unfinished Symphony, because although Bunin did not complete the work before his death in 1953, he nonetheless fashioned his memoir as a moving orchestral work on the writers' existence and art. . . . Even in its unfinished state, About Chekhov stands not only as a stirring testament of one writer's respect and affection for another, but also as a living memorial to two highly creative artists. Bunin draws on his intimate knowledge of Chekhov to depict the writer at work, in love, and in relation with such writers as Tolstoy and Gorky. Through anecdotes and observations, spirited exchanges and reflections, this memoir draws a unique portrait that plumbs the depths and complexities of two of Russia's greatest writers. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Black Voices Various, 2001-04-01 “If you don’t know my name, you don’t know your own.”—James Baldwin Featuring fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Black Voices captures the diverse and powerful words of a literary explosion, the ramifications of which can be seen and heard in the works of today’s African-American artists. A comprehensive and impressive primer, this anthology presents some of the greatest and most enduring work born out of the African-American experience in the United States. Contributors Include: Sterling A. Brown Charles W. Chesnutt John Henrik Clarke Countee Cullen Frederick Douglass Paul Laurence Dunbar James Weldon Johnson Naomi Long Madgett Paule Marshall Clarence Major Claude McKay Ann Petry Dudley Randall J. Saunders Redding Jean Toomer Darwin T. Turner As well as: Lerone Bennett, Jr. Frank London Brown Arthur P. Davis Frank Marshall Davis Owen Dodson Mari Evans Rudolph Fisher Dan Georgakas Robert Hayden Frank Horne Blyden Jackson Lance Jeffers Fenton Johnson George E. Kent Alain Locke Diane Oliver Stanley Sanders Richard G. Stern Sterling Stuckey Melvin B. Tolson |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Home; Social Essays Amiri Baraka, 1966 |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: From Behind the Veil Robert B. Stepto, 1991 This pioneering study of Afro-American narrative is far more critical, historical, and textual than biographical, chronological, and atextual. Robert Stepto asserts that Afro-American culture has its store of canonical stories or pregeneric myths, the primary one being the quest for freedom and literacy. This second edition includes a new preface and an afterward entitled Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Memoirs of a Beatnik Diane Di Prima, 2002 Memoirs of a Beatnik is an account of a young artist coming of age sensually and intellectually. The book grew out of the author's own experience as a bold and independent woman who dropped out of college at the age of 18 in order to write. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: No Woman No Cry Rita Marley, Hettie Jones, 2011-08-19 Bob Marley is the unchallenged king of reggae and one of music's great iconic figures. Rita Marley was not just his wife and the mother of four of his children but his backing singer and friend, life-long companion and soul mate. They met in Trenchtown when he was 19 and she was 18, and she was very much part of his musical career, selling his early recordings from their house in the days before Island Records signed up the Wailers. She shared the hard times and the dangers - when Bob was wounded in a gunfight before the Peace Concert, Rita was shot in the head and left for dead. Their marriage was not always easy, but Rita was the woman Bob returned to no matter where music and other women might take him, the woman who held him when he died at the age of 35. Today she sees herself as the guardian of his legacy. Full of new insights, No Woman No Cry is a unique biography of Marley by someone who understands what it meant to grow up in poverty in Jamaica, to battle racism and prejudice. It is also a moving and inspiring story of a marriage that survived both poverty and then the strains of global celebrity. 'It will surely become the definitive biographical account of the reggae guitarist-singer-songwriter who changed pop music and in the process became a leader to millions' The Times 'Rita Marley is reggae royalty . . . In her own words, this is a revealing insight into Marley's life and legacy' Daily Mirror |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! Robert E. Burns, 1997-10-01 I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is the amazing true story of one man's search for meaning, fall from grace, and eventual victory over injustice. In 1921, Robert E. Burns was a shell-shocked and penniless veteran who found himself at the mercy of Georgia's barbaric penal system when he fell in with a gang of petty thieves. Sentenced to six to ten years' hard labor for his part in a robbery that netted less than $6.00, Burns was shackled to a county chain gang. After four months of backbreaking work, he made a daring escape, dodging shotgun blasts, racing through swamps, and eluding bloodhounds on his way north. For seven years Burns lived as a free man. He married and became a prosperous Chicago businessman and publisher. When he fell in love with another woman, however, his jealous wife turned him in to the police, who arrested him as a fugitive from justice. Although he was promised lenient treatment and a quick pardon, he was back on a chain gang within a month. Undaunted, Burns did the impossible and escaped a second time, this time to New Jersey. He was still a hunted man living in hiding when this book was first published in 1932. The book and its movie version, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1933, shocked the world by exposing Georgia's brutal treatment of prisoners. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is a daring and heartbreaking book, an odyssey of misfortune, love, betrayal, adventure, and, above all, the unshakable courage and inner strength of the fugitive himself. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: A History of African American Autobiography Joycelyn Moody, 2021-07-22 This History explores innovations in African American autobiography since its inception, examining the literary and cultural history of Black self-representation amid life writing studies. By analyzing the different forms of autobiography, including pictorial and personal essays, editorials, oral histories, testimonials, diaries, personal and open letters, and even poetry performance media of autobiographies, this book extends the definition of African American autobiography, revealing how people of African descent have created and defined the Black self in diverse print cultures and literary genres since their arrival in the Americas. It illustrates ways African Americans use life writing and autobiography to address personal and collective Black experiences of identity, family, memory, fulfillment, racism and white supremacy. Individual chapters examine scrapbooks as a source of self-documentation, African American autobiography for children, readings of African American persona poems, mixed-race life writing after the Civil Rights Movement, and autobiographies by African American LGBTQ writers. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Minor Characters Joyce Johnson, 2005-09 Johnson's book is a personal memoir and a summation of the times, a story of adolescent rebellion and a desire to choose a different life. She shows how the Beat women, in deciding to break the rules and leave home as unmarried young women in the 1950s, discovered the risks and the heady excitement of trying to live as freely as the rebels they loved. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Autobiography of the Lower East Side Rashidah Abubakr, Rashidah Ismaili, 2014-04-01 This well established poet makes a brilliant debut in fiction with these complex, poetically detailed, interrelated stories of Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean and the USA who converge and form an artistic community in the early 1960s in the most easterly regions of Alphabet City . -David Henderson, author of 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky Ismaili charts the lower East side just prior to the turbulent, revolutionary Sixties, when the influence of Leroi Jones and the Black Arts Movement signaled a cultural sea-change. Her characters persevere through desertion, loss, abandonment and betrayal, to achieve fulfillment in a fractured society. - Vinnie Burrows A sensuous and intimate portrait of a place and a generation. Belongs in the canon of American literary and socio-political classics, alongside Diane di Prima, James Baldwin, Grace Paley, Vivian Gornick, and Jack Kerouac. A masterpiece. - Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots and Help Wanted: Female Autobiography of the Lower East Side is a novel in short stories, set in New York during the late nineteen-fifties and the turbulent decade that followed. Inhale the exotic spices from tenement hallways, smell the sweat and garbage in the streets, feel the sweltering heat of summer in the City. Taste the texture and densities of African dishes: the rice and pepper sauce, stewed fruits, tagine, okra soup, bread and fish. Walk the alphabet streets in the daytime, weaving among pushcarts, or at night in the biting winds of winter, footsteps too close at your back. Sway to the cool jazz. Groove to the lilt of African voices reciting poetry, intoning prayers. Follow a junkie riding out a Jones, an anarchist handing out pamphlets, a pacifist leading a draft resister on the Underground route from New York City to Canada. The Autobiography of the Lower East Side pulsates with the heartbeat of Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1960s, its artists and activists caught in the racial, sexual, political, and class tensions of the era. Ismaili's richly-evoked setting presents characters learning to survive in the jazz scene, the theater, and the arts while dealing with interracial relationships, abuse, addiction, and the toll of the Vietnam draft. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, 1999 One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during this life. This title is a collection of the most important of Douglass's hundreds of speeches, letters, articles and editorials. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Mo' Meta Blues Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Ben Greenman, 2015-05-12 You have to bear in mind that [Questlove] is one of the smartest motherf*****s on the planet. His musical knowledge, for all practical purposes, is limitless. --Robert Christgau A punch-drunk memoir in which Everyone's Favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture. Ahmir Questlove Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. He is one of our most ubiquitous cultural tastemakers, and in this, his first book, he reveals his own formative experiences--from growing up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer, to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth. Mo' Meta Blues also has some (many) random (or not) musings about the state of hip hop, the state of music criticism, the state of statements, as well as a plethora of run-ins with celebrities, idols, and fellow artists, from Stevie Wonder to KISS to D'Angelo to Jay-Z to Dave Chappelle to...you ever seen Prince roller-skate?!? But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's a book that questions what a book like Mo' Meta Blues really is. It's the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind. It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes. It's a record that keeps going around and around. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader Imamu Amiri Baraka, William J. Harris, 1991 Amiri Baraka-dramatist, poet, essayist, orator, & fiction writer-is perhaps the preeminent African-American literary figure of our time. Yet, until now, it has been impossible to find the full range of his work represented in one volume. The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader provides the most comprehensive selection of Baraka's work to date, spanning more than thirty years of a brilliant, prolific, & controversial career in which he has produced a dozen books of poetry, twenty-six plays, eight collections of essays & speeches, & two books of fiction. This essential anthology also contains previously unpublished work-including essays on Jesse Jackson & James Baldwin-as well as a chronology & a full bibliography. The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader includes poems from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, The Dead Lecturer, Black Magic, Hard Facts, It's Nation Time, & Poetry for the Advanced; the plays Dutchman, Great Goodness of Life, & What Was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production?; essays from Blues People, Social Essays, Black Music, Daggers & Javelins, & The Music: Reflections on Jazz & Blues; & much, much more. |
| the autobiography of leroi jones: Four Black Revolutionary Plays LeRoi Jones, 1971 |
Autobiography | Definition, History, Types, Examples, & Facts
Apr 25, 2025 · autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not …
Autobiography - Wikipedia
An autobiography, [a] sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, …
25 Best Autobiographies to Read in 2024 - Reader's Digest
Oct 5, 2024 · Reading great autobiographies can scratch that curious itch, as we get to walk through a person’s life with them serving as our guide. To help you find the best …
How to Write an Autobiography: Where to Start & What to Say - wikiHow
Feb 24, 2025 · To write an autobiography, start by making a timeline of your most important life events that you feel you could write about. Then, identify the main characters in your life story, …
Autobiography Definition, Examples, and Writing Guide
Aug 26, 2022 · An autobiography is a nonfiction story of a person’s life, written from their point of view. Autobiographies are popular among the general reading public. A newly released …
Autobiography - Examples and Definition of Autobiography
Autobiography is one type of biography, which tells the life story of its author, meaning it is a written record of the author’s life. Rather than being written by somebody else, an …
Definition and Examples of Autobiography - ThoughtCo
May 24, 2019 · An autobiography is an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person. Adjective: autobiographical. Many scholars regard the Confessions (c. 398) by …
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of AUTOBIOGRAPHY is the biography of a person narrated by that person : a usually written account of a person's life in their own words. How to use autobiography in a …
Autobiography in Literature: Definition & Examples
An autobiography (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written biography. The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or …
Autobiography: Definition and Examples | LiteraryTerms.net
Clear definition and great examples of Autobiography. An autobiography is a self-written life story.
Autobiography | Definition, History, Types, Examples, & Facts
Apr 25, 2025 · autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not …
Autobiography - Wikipedia
An autobiography, [a] sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, …
25 Best Autobiographies to Read in 2024 - Reader's Digest
Oct 5, 2024 · Reading great autobiographies can scratch that curious itch, as we get to walk through a person’s life with them serving as our guide. To help you find the best …
How to Write an Autobiography: Where to Start & What to Say - wikiHow
Feb 24, 2025 · To write an autobiography, start by making a timeline of your most important life events that you feel you could write about. Then, identify the main characters in your life story, …
Autobiography Definition, Examples, and Writing Guide
Aug 26, 2022 · An autobiography is a nonfiction story of a person’s life, written from their point of view. Autobiographies are popular among the general reading public. A newly released …
Autobiography - Examples and Definition of Autobiography
Autobiography is one type of biography, which tells the life story of its author, meaning it is a written record of the author’s life. Rather than being written by somebody else, an …
Definition and Examples of Autobiography - ThoughtCo
May 24, 2019 · An autobiography is an account of a person's life written or otherwise recorded by that person. Adjective: autobiographical. Many scholars regard the Confessions (c. 398) by …
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of AUTOBIOGRAPHY is the biography of a person narrated by that person : a usually written account of a person's life in their own words. How to use autobiography in a …
Autobiography in Literature: Definition & Examples
An autobiography (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written biography. The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or …
Autobiography: Definition and Examples | LiteraryTerms.net
Clear definition and great examples of Autobiography. An autobiography is a self-written life story.
