Abstract:

Amiri Baraka was indeed one of America’s greatest writers and, in fact, it would be amiss for me to eschew my personal contact with him in the 1990s. Our paths crossed during the 1998 Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ Conference in Chicago, when a fellow graduate student and I were selected by Chicago State University’s literature program to perform Robert Hayden’s “Runagate Runagate” as an opening act to what would later amount to a spirited and emotional speech/poetry reading by Baraka. I have cherished the opportunity and remain ever so grateful to have graced the same stage with an author of such monumental stature. His contribution to black literature and the American literary tradition is unparalleled. He is accredited as the co-founder of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and “one of America’s most important literary figures” (Chideya). Indeed, like many great writers, Baraka had his regrets during the later years of his career but seemed to have handled them appropriately before he passed away. In the introduction to his glowing book of essays, Home: Social Essays, he admits, “One heavy and aggravating problem with [my] early writings is that I’ve long since changed my views on some topics” (15). He prances through several examples, specifically noting his indulgence in Marxism, admitting: “For instance, the homophobic language in several of the essays … is wrongheaded and unscientific”. This shift from his rhetoric in the 1970s, for good reasons, suggests what many great writers have pointed out about writing and its influence on the writer. Perhaps this seems to be what James Baldwin attempted to explain when he observes, “Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching”. I agree with Baldwin. Perhaps when Baraka’s corpus is re-examined to situate his influence on writers from the younger generation and writers belonging to other literary traditions but whose hindsight parallels his, he will be remembered as one poet, playwright, essayist and cultural spokesperson, whose voice and visionary commitment helped in settling anxieties in what is today recognized globally as American literature.

Keywords: