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Troy
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 1373
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008 - 01:02 pm: | 
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VIDEO: Amiri Baraka: Evolution of a Revolutionary Poet. Exhibit at Zambezi Bazaar in conjunction with the Leimert Park Book Fair.
http://aalbc.com/authors/amiri.htm
Amiri Baraka is one of the most prolific African American writers of the 20th century. He is an acclaimed poet and the Obie-winning playwright of Dutchman. His long list of writing credits includes: Blues People; Home; Social Essays; Black Fire; Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones and Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones. He continues to be active in the struggle against racism and capitalism, to organize artists, and tp participate in the struggle for Black Liberation. He is currently teaching classes on Pan-African literature at Stony Brook College at the State University of New York and at Columbia University.
Video Produced by AALBC.com |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 136
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 - 09:09 am: |
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Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays: LeRoi Jones
This is actually two seperate plays. You can find it as an old paperback. If you have not read this, I would highly recommend it. I was a youngster when I read these plays and it changed how I saw certain things in racial relations. I used to go around imploring my friends to read them.
And I admire his poetry/prose. Brave, brazen, crushing to anyone who does not care to hear a voice that will not quiver.
Thanks T-roy. |
Troy
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 1375
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 - 02:51 pm: |
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Hey Rondall,
Did you check out the video? I actually got this one professionally shot and edited. I think you will learn a lot about Amiri Baraka and work.
Let me know what you think about the video.
The Dutchman & The Slave
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Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 137
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 - 04:04 pm: |
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I have not looked at it yet. I am at work and prefer to watch it at home. After all, I would admonish anyone else I caught watching videos...
I will watch it in a couple of hours and holla back atchya. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 352
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 - 11:23 pm: |
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Well, having recently read Another Country and Just Above My Head, let me say the following. I have read the chapter in Soul on Ice containing Eldridge Cleaver's criticism of Baldwin (described by Pearl K. Bell as "Stalinist criticism given new life in obscenity") which Cleaver wrote in prison and gave to his lawyer to publish in Ramparts magazine. But Cleaver wasn't Baldwin's only critic among the black ideologues of that era, who, unfortunately, Baldwin may have accomodated to some degree in his later work, which, after "Another Country," becomes more polemical, albeit not entirely because of his critics. So without knowing the specifics of Baraka's criticism, Baldwin's presentation of homosexuality in Another Country (with "proselytizing zeal," according to Robert Bone), as well as the theme of interracial sexuality in general, could not have pleased Baraka any more than it did Cleaver. Add the fact that probably the most sympathetic character, indeed, the "redeeming" character, Eric (probably a Baldwin surrogate figure, recently returned from Paris) is a red-headed white man from Alabama. So while Baldwin didn't drop the theme of homosexuality in his subsequent novels, he makes the homosexuality primarily intra-racial and white homosexuals, who make only brief appearances, are masochistic in their sexual attraction to black men (probably in conformity to Baraka, then LeRoi Jones, who apparently makes his white homosexual character in The Baptism and The Toilet a pathetic wretch who is brutally abused by a gang of black youths.) But whatever the shortcomings of the 1962 best-seller "Another Country," it's still a novel with an integrationist message (intended to inform and even confront white readers) and Baldwin, who I believe had refused to align himself with the call for a literature exclusively by and for blacks, is worthy of admiration for those reasons alone. But all that aside, it's impossible to imagine a contemporary novel with as provocative a message being so widely read today, therefore Cleaver's description of it as "fawning over white people," really doesn't mean anything to me. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 141
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 - 09:52 am: |
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Okay but the video was interesting.
I thought I would get to see Amiri in the vid, so that was some what of a let down. The segment did a nice job of encapsulating the work of Baraka. That with in itself would provide a solid foundation for traveling display of a significant part of Black history.
You did a nice job on the piece Troy. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 355
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 05, 2008 - 10:01 am: |
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Okay but the video was interesting
Touché 
What's your opinion of Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual, the 575-page biography by Jerry Gafio Watts? I'm reading it.
One correction: I indicated that I hadn't read either play. The Baptism is described by Watts as "a hilarious play criticizing the moral bankruptcy of the Christian Church, especially the black church." The character named Homosexual, "who is depicted as a humorous if not ludicrous figure, remains the only character with any common sense." The other play, The Toilet, is a different story.
Baraka's critique (or condemnation, as Watts calls it) of Baldwin and South African Peter Abrahams appeared in the 1963 "Brief Reflections on Two Hot Shots."
From the biography:
...Jones states that if a writer has nothing to say but "'I can feel' or 'I am intelligent' there is really no need saying it." That is, in their quest for white recognition of their suffering, they do not take a stand. "A writer must have a point of view...he must be standing somewhere in the world, or else he is not one of us, and his commentary is of little value."
... the Jones critique of Baldwin is misleading. At the very moment that this critique of Baldwin appeared in Kulchur, few in the American intellectual community would have claimed that James Baldwin's writing lacked a point of view. Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) were neither noncommittal nor lacking a point of view. In 1963, the same year that Jones attacked Baldwin, Baldwin published The Fire Next Time. As a political essay writer, Baldwin, at his best, grasped a complexity in the Afro-American psyche and the American racial conundrum that forever eluded Jones (except perhaps in his play Dutchman).
More important, Baldwin did not merely whine about his treatment at the hands of whites. It is true that he wrote as a Christian-influenced moralist who believed in the redemptive nature of suffering. Nevertheless, Baldwin labeled as dehumanization his racist oppressors' urgency to subjugate black "others." In sum, he was not simply trying to invoke his specialness as a sufferer but to use suffering as cultural capital in his efforts to morally critique the world around him. Jones's misinterpretation of Baldwin may have been deliberate, as Baldwin's thought contained an element of the victim status that may have struck Jones as ethnically self-demeaning. Yet instead of concentrating on that one facet of Baldwin's writing, Jones attempted to sweep all of it under a rug of irrelevance. It was a clever polemical ploy but somewhat dishonest, and in overstating Baldwin's dependence on whites, Jones stated his own posture:
If Abraham and Baldwin were turned white, for example, there would be no more noise from them [...] Somebody turn them! And then perhaps the rest of us can get down to the work at hand. Cutting throats!
A dramatic but childish ending. Jones needed to explain why Baldwin's existence prevented him (and "the rest of us") from getting down to the work of cutting throats. As a foretaste of the pronouncements encouraging violence that emerged from Jones's pen during the Black Arts era, he invokes a disingenuous obstacle to explain why he cannot, just yet, actualize his threats."
[End quote] |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 356
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 05, 2008 - 10:03 am: |
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Although Watts doesn't say anything about Another Country (1962), he states that "Brief Reflections on Two Hot Shots" is the piece in which Baraka "claims that Baldwin's writings were spavined whines and pleas for the white recognition of his humanity." Does anyone know if that's accurate? I had always thought (probably incorrectly) that the insult, "His spavined whine and plea is really disgusting," referred to Baldwin's style of public advocacy on behalf of civil rights. 1963 was the year of Baldwin's lecture tour of the south for C.O.R.E., his meetings with James Meredith and Medgar Evers, his appearance on the cover of Time magazine in May, and his meetiing with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a group of civil rights leaders and entertainers he had assembled.
I can see what Watts means when he says that Baldwin "wrote as a Christian-influenced moralist who believed in the redemptive nature of suffering" and how that might apply to Another Country, however, I would have just said that Baldwin's message is about the redemptive power of love and confession, made complex by themes of race and homosexuality. The point about "victim status" is not so simple. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 143
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2008 - 10:35 am: |
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Damn Steve_s...now that's the type insight I love! Thank you very much for sharing those last two posts.
Especially this one:
ding ding ding >>>>>>>> " I would have just said that Baldwin's message is about the redemptive power of love and confession, made complex by themes of race and homosexuality." <<<<<ding ding ding
I have felt that many of our own cultural critics prosyletize about not being Black enough or not committed to the Black cause. And being caught up in the cause you can forget about the art of what has been produced. Alas, vast social acceptance is the curse of "selling out". If your message was Black enough then it would be shunned liked the rest of our...?
I love the power and grace of that constant graduant of what is Black. The shades of darkness tend to shift like sunset in the summer time. What is not dark enough today may be sunset next week. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 7112
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2008 - 11:19 am: |
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It is very hard to fix what Baraka said at a certain point in time and say that this represents his total thought.
His positions evolved over time.
What he felt about Baldwin in the heat of the macho, revolutionary sixties might be different now, especially in the light of the murder of his lesbian sister by a man who was enraged that his sister had "stolen" his woman (I was present when he talked about this and how homophobia was responsible for the murders)
Just as the Baldwin who wrote such eloquent essays and take such princpalled stands could do a hatchet job on Richard Wright and, when confronted by Wright about it could make the offhand remark "We all must slay our fathers")
"claims that Baldwin's writings were spavined whines and pleas for the white recognition of his humanity.
(To the Baraka of the period of the start of the Black Arts movement and the riots in Newark they might be. Might not been to him now or before (in Baraka's Greenwich Village period).
The Leroi Jones who hung out in the village with gay poets and married a Jewish woman was accused of anti semitism later when he belittled the deaths of Goodman and Schwerner--a stance he later repudiated.
Baraka has stated later that all the acclaim he got for "Dutchman" fucked him up--it was a crazy time, the 60's. There was lots of breast beating and guilt people were trying to work out for not being part of the struggle earlier--this and drug use and official harassment made folks crazy.
I was at I believe Brandeis University in the 70's when Baraka appeared. He savagely ripped into Diana Ross, James Brown and Jim Brown in his poetry, grinning all evil while he did it.
When I brought this up to him at a reading a few years ago, he denied it and I let it slide
Shirley LeFlore, local poet and friend of Baraka, said his genius has a bad quality--often one time he will strongly state a position that, if you confront him on later he will state, "I'm through with that now"
This ain't no excuse, but it's a reason.
I think it is why Baraka, though respected and studied, does not have much of a real following. In addition to continuing to champion socialism after most of the world has dropped it, one never knows where he may be coming from.. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 145
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 08, 2008 - 02:02 pm: |
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"The shades of darkness tend to shift like sunset in the summer time. What is not dark enough today may be sunset next week."---
Yes sir Chris Hayden. I have always recognized the same from many of our poets and writers but especially him. It is sometimes disheartening because you want that individual to remain your champion of thought and art. But alas, they melt under the friction of time and further examination.
Don't we all...? |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 310
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 08, 2008 - 10:39 pm: |
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Chris, thanks for your analysis of this complex man. I've read both his ex-(Jewish)-wife's memoir ("How I Became Hettie Jones) and one of his daughters' (Lisa's) books "Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex, and Hair"; in it, she writes about her aunt's murder), so I really know Baraka more tangentially than anything.
You say that Baraka talked about homophobia contributing to his sister's murder. If I recall correctly, his daughter (in her book) doesn't mention that factor, or the motive for the murder); she blames racism. Building security or maybe another tenant--I can't recall--buzzed the killer in, presuming (stupidly, tragically) that since the aunt was black and this guy was black they must know each other. I thought it was a random crime.
Prior to reading both women's reflections (ex-wife and daughter), the little I did read/know about Baraka presented him as one to be revered/celebrated. The memoirs clearly show his feet of clay, but (again, if memory serves) neither woman did a hatchet job or seemed to be vengeful or bitter. I particularly appreciated Hettie Jones's recounting of the Beat era and of her life during that time, before, during, and after Baraka. |
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