Biography of Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934–January 9, 2014) was an award-winning playwright, poet, critic, educator, and activist. He played an influential role in the Black Arts Movement and served as poet laureate of his native New Jersey. His career spanned decades, though his legacy is not without controversy. Fast Facts: Amiri Baraka Occupation: Writer, playwright, poet, activistAlso Known As: Leroi Jones, Imamu Amear BarakaBorn: October 7, 1934 in Newark, New JerseyDied: January 9, 2014 in Newark, New JerseyParents: Colt Leverette Jones and Anna Lois Russ JonesEducation: Rutgers University, Howard UniversityKey Publications: Dutchman, Blues People: Negro Music in White America, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri BarakaSpouse(s): Hettie Jones, Amina BarakaChildren: Ras Baraka, Kellie Jones, Lisa Jones, Shani Baraka, Amiri Baraka Jr., Obalaji Baraka, Ahi Baraka, Maria Jones, Dominique DiPrimaNotable Quote: â€Å"Art is whatever makes you proud to be human. Early Years Amiri Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey to postal supervisor Colt Leverette Jones and social worker Anna Lois Jones. Growing up, Baraka played the drums, piano, and trumpet, and enjoyed poetry and jazz. He especially admired the musician Miles Davis. Baraka attended Barringer High School and won a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1951. A year later, he transferred to the historically black Howard University, where he studied subjects like philosophy and religion. At Howard, he began using the name LeRoi James but would later revert to his birth name, Jones. Expelled before graduating from Howard, Jones signed up for the US Air Force, which dishonorably discharged him after three years when communist writings were found in his possession. Although he became a sergeant in the Air Force, Baraka found military service troubling. He called the experience â€Å"racist, degrading, and intellectually paralyzing.† But his time in the Air Force ultimately deepened his interest in poetry. He worked at the base library while stationed in Puerto Rico, which allowed him to devote himself to reading. He took a particular liking to the works of the Beat poets and began writing his own poetry. After his discharge from the Air Force, he lived in Manhattan, taking classes at Columbia University and The New School for Social Research. He also became involved in Greenwich Village’s art scene and got to know poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Charles Olson. Marriage and Poetry As his interest in poetry deepened, Baraka met Hettie Cohen, a white Jewish woman who shared his passion for writing. The interracial couple married in 1958 against the wishes of Cohens Parents, who cried at the news of the union. Together, the couple started Totem Press, which featured the writings of beat poets like Allen Ginsberg; they also launched Yugen literary magazine. Baraka edited and wrote criticism for the literary journal Kulchur as well. While married to Cohen, with whom he had two daughters, Baraka began a romantic relationship with another woman writer, Diane di Prima. They edited a magazine called The Floating Bear and started the New York Poets Theater, along with others, in 1961. That year, Baraka’s first poetry book, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, debuted. During this period, the writer became increasingly political. A trip to Cuba in 1960 led him to believe that he should use his art to fight oppression, so Baraka began to embrace black nationalism and support Cuban president Fidel Castro’s regime. In addition, his complicated personal life took a turn when he and Diane di Prima had a daughter, Dominique, in 1962.  The next year saw the release of Baraka’s book Blues People: Negro Music in White America. In 1965, Baraka and Cohen divorced. A New Identity Using the name LeRoi Jones, Baraka wrote the play Dutchman, which premiered in 1964. The play chronicles a violent encounter between a white woman and a black man on the New York subway. It won the Obie Award for Best American Play and was later adapted for film. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X led Baraka to leave the mostly white Beat scene and move to the predominantly black neighborhood of Harlem. There, he opened the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School, which became a haven for black artists such as Sun Ra and Sonia Sanchez, and led other black artists to open similar venues. The rise of black-run art venues led to a movement known as the Black Arts Movement. He also criticized the Civil Rights Movement for embracing nonviolence and suggested in works such as his 1965 poem â€Å"Black Art that violence was necessary to create a black world. Inspired by Malcolm’s death, he also penned the work A Poem for Black Hearts in 1965 and the novel The System of Dante’s Hell the same year. In 1967, he released the short-story collection Tales. Blackness and the use of violence to achieve liberation both factor into these works. Baraka’s newfound militancy played a role in his divorce from his white wife, according to her memoir How I Became Hettie Jones. Baraka himself admitted as much in his 1980 Village Voice essay, â€Å"Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite. (He denied choosing the title for the essay.) He wrote, â€Å"As a Black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her †¦ How could someone be married to the enemy? Barakas second wife, Sylvia Robinson, later known as Amina Baraka, was a black woman. They had a Yoruba marriage ceremony in 1967, the year Baraka published the poetry collection Black Magic. A year earlier, he published Home: Social Essays. With Amina, Baraka returned to his native Newark, where they opened a theater and residence for artists called the Spirit House. He also headed to Los Angeles to meet with scholar and activist Ron Karenga (or Maulana Karenga), founder of the Kwanzaa holiday, which aims to reconnect black Americans to their African heritage. Instead of using the name LeRoi Jones, the poet took the name Imamu Amear Baraka. Imamu is a title meaning spiritual leader in Swahili, Amear means prince, and Baraka essentially means a divine blessing.† He ultimately went by Amiri Baraka. In 1968, Baraka co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing and his play Home on the Range was staged to benefit the Black Panther party. He also chaired the Committee for Unified Newark, founded and chaired  the Congress of African People, and was a chief organizer of the National Black Political Convention. By the 1970s, Baraka began to champion the liberation of â€Å"third-world† peoples across the globe rather than black nationalism. He embraced a Marxist-Leninist philosophy and became a lecturer in 1979 in the Africana studies department of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he later became a professor. He was also a visiting professor at Columbia University and Rutgers University and taught at the New School, San Francisco State, University of Buffalo, and George Washington University. In 1984, Baraka’s memoir, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, was published. He went on to win the American Book Award in 1989 and the Langston Hughes Award. In 1998, he landed a role in the feature film Bulworth, starring  Warren Beatty. Later Years In 2002, Baraka received another honor when he became New Jersey’s poet laureate. But an anti-Semitism scandal ultimately drove him from the role. The controversy stemmed from a poem he wrote after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks called â€Å"Somebody Blew Up America?† In the poem, Baraka suggested that Israel had advanced warning of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The poem includes the lines: Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosionAnd cracking they sides at the notion†¦Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombedWho told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin TowersTo stay home that day Baraka said that the poem wasn’t anti-Semitic because it referenced Israel rather than Jews as a whole. The Anti-Defamation League argued that Baraka’s words were indeed anti-Semitic. The poet served as New Jersey’s poet laureate at the time, and then-Gov. Jim McGreevey attempted to oust him from the role. McGreevey (who would later resign as governor for unrelated reasons) couldn’t legally force Baraka to step down, so the state senate passed legislation to abolish the post altogether. When the law took effect on July 2, 2003, Baraka was no longer poet laureate. Death On Jan. 9, 2014, Amiri Baraka died at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, where he had been a patient since December. Upon his death, Baraka had written more than 50 books in a wide range  of genres. His funeral took place Jan. 18 at Newark Symphony Hall. Sources Amiri Baraka 1934-2014. Poetry Foundation.Fox, Margalit. Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79. New York Times, 9 January, 2014. Amiri Baraka. Poets.org.

Reconstruction of the South After the Civil Rights Movement

After the Civil War, the nation sought to reconstruct the South, both socially and economically, so it could be readmitted into the Union. This meant giving the newly emancipated African Americans the civil rights and liberties that they deserved as United States citizens. Through events like the Civil Rights Movement, the nation was exposed to new ideologies and opinions of various groups who aimed to grant African Americans those rights and liberties. However, the methods in which the different groups took were not always the same—some brought the nation together, while others pulled it apart. In America, Malcolm X’s Nation of Islam and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference both sought to defeat racism of whites towards blacks, empower African Americans, and promote solidarity. However, Malcolm X and King had different methods of getting their points across; King chose the more nonviolent route, while Malcolm X chose the forceful route where the use of violence was allowed. Malcolm X was also the advocate for creating a separate black community, often using the phrase â€Å"Separation, not segregation.† Throughout the course of the book, Malcolm X is portrayed as a man who shifted in his own understanding, as well as his interpretation of how African Americans and whites existed in America. In the early years, Malcolm X was seen as a force pulling America apart. However, just prior to his death, Malcolm X started to see that the entire white raceShow MoreRelatedReconstruction During The Civil War Essay1676 Words   |  7 PagesReconstruction The United States went through many changes after the Civil War and during the Reconstruction period of 1866-1877. 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The civil war was one of the big three events along with the Revolution and World War Two

Family violence/abuse is not the answer Free Essays

We are told that violence is not the answer, yet our country goes to war when we have problems†¦ It is the way people and families are, the answer to everything. I have chosen to explore the theme family violence/abuse is not the answer. This theme is shown in the short story â€Å"boy† by Bruce Stewart, â€Å"In the rubbish bin† by Apirana Taylor, a true story by Michelle Manning â€Å"its ok† and Harry potter by J. We will write a custom essay sample on Family violence/abuse is not the answer or any similar topic only for you Order Now K Rowling At the beginning of Boy, boy who is Maori he feels like he doesn’t belong in his culture â€Å"im not a Maori† he gets bullied at school and comes home crying. His Dad comes home and sees Boy crying he says to Boy â€Å"Stop being a baby or I’ll give you something to cry about â€Å"This shows that the Boys dad is full of violence and threats. â€Å"Stormed into the bedroom AGAIN and started hitting me with his razor strap†. By this saying in the story with the word â€Å"Again† means this isn’t the first time or the last time Boy will see of that razor strap. At the end of the story boy finds his true place where he belongs from his mother’s death. He is in the hands of his mother’s family and I think that’s the last time Boy would have seen of that razor strap. The short story â€Å"in the rubbish bin â€Å"it portrays the theme that violence/ Abuse is not the answer. More the mental side than the physical side. We see this in the character phillipa. Phillipa who gets mentally abused by her mum. Her poor upbringing causes phillipa to take a smelly trip to a rubbish tin. Imagine how many kids in New Zealand are exactly like her we have over 1,600 gaming machines and over 100 gaming tables and that’s at Auckland sky tower alone. There are cases were we have parents leaving kids in cars on hot days just because the mum or dad want to go have a try on the machines and the tables it needs to stop . Why don’t the parents stop and think before they do, they should be thinking of their kid’s future and saving up on item’s that they will have wanted when they don’t have the money. Maybe the government needs a wakeup call and instead of having the casino open 24 hours a day, seven days a week make it less so we don’t have more cases of them on the news of kids in hot cars and forgotten about. In the rubbish bin and boy have similar backgrounds just with a twist, Boys mother takes one hundred percent care of her child and Ruth shows no appreciation towards Phillipa. The dads in the story are both abusive Boys dad towards boy and Phillipas dad towards Ruth. The short story â€Å"its ok† also identifies the theme â€Å"family violence is not the answer†matt has shown that he thinks that violence is the answer â€Å"sharp hard slaps† , He was hitting her face† ,He was hurting her to much now â€Å" shows that Matt is very abusive and he won’t stop anytime soon. Matt has his wife begging him to stop â€Å"she was begging now â€Å"stop it! Stop it! † How to cite Family violence/abuse is not the answer, Essays

Unreliable Narrator free essay sample

Johnny Lai 07659563 Narrator is the person (perspective) which is chosen by the author to tell the story (literary work, movie, play, verbal account, etc. ) to the readers (audiences). Traditionally, the narrator is supposed to be reliable, since he/she/it is the only connection between the readers and the fiction world. But occasionally, authors would use unreliable narrator to be the perspective of their story. The concept of the unreliable narrator (as opposed to author) became more important with the rise of the 18th Century. Until the late 1800s, literary criticism as an academic exercise dealt solely with poetry (including epic poems like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, and poetic drama like Shakespeare). Most poems did not have a narrator distinct from the author. But novels, with their immersive fictional worlds, created a problem, especially when the narrators views differed significantly from that of the author. (Wikipedia) Unreliable narrator is usually adopted when the author try to create suspense to the readers, make them more critical suspicious and avoiding passive reading. We will write a custom essay sample on Unreliable Narrator or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page To let them think in different perspectives and reconstruct the truth through their own cognitive thinking. It involves a more interactive process then the traditional reliable narrator, the readers just need to sit tight and receive everything from the narrator. Unreliable narrators can be classified into two main categories, those cannot be fully trusted because they do not understand what they are narrating (Robert Walton) or those who are simply lying to the readers to suit their needs or justify their faults (Victor Frankenstein). In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley used unreliable narrators to tell the story, to make the readers question the truth told by different narrators and created a huge room of imagination to them. There are two narrator in Frankenstein were considered as unreliable, Robert Walton, an Arctic seafarer whose narrated his part with the letters for his sister in the beginning and the end of the story; Victor Frankenstein, a talented scientist created a monster whose narrated most portion of the story. Robert Walton, who captained a North Pole bound ship, was a very good friend of Victor Frankenstein. Saying a good would be too neutral, the relationship between them would be more accurately to be admiration. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable. (Shelly, Frankenstein) that was the description of Robert Waltons opinion towards Victor Frankenstein; we can see how obsessed Walton was. Considering the bias of Robert Walton, his narration became unreliable. He trusted everything Victor said without any judgment. His determination was unreliable, and therefore, he became a reliable narrator. Actually, Robert Waltons situation of unreliable narration was very much similar to the movie The Sixth sense. In The Sixth sense, Cole Sear, a troubled boy who claimed to see ghosts who dont know theyre dead, seek for help of a child psychiatrist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe. Because of this, he was called a freak in school. Crowe, at first thought he was seeing things, but after spending a lot of time with Cole, he discovered Cole may be seeing dead people after all. At the end, Cole discovered that Dr. Malcolm Crowe was actually a ghost, who didnt realize his own death. Comparing Robert Walton with Cole Sear, they are both defiantly unreliable narrators. But they were not intended to trick the readers/audiences; they were both misled by others. In Frankenstein; In The Sixth sense the person who misled Cole Sear was his psychiatrist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe. They both trusted the misleader with their heart, but turning to be unreliable narrators following their wrong judgment. In contrast, Cole Sear would be a better unreliable narrator then Robert Walton. It was because Cole Sear was misled by someone who misled himself (Dr. Malcolm Crowe thought he was still alive), compare to Robert Walton was misled by someone who may intentionally misled him (Victor Frankenstein may lie to cover/justify his faults/crime). But no matter what, they were still unreliable narrator. After analyzing the innocent unreliable narrator, lets look at the narrator who may possibly intentionally mislead the readers by lying. Victor Frankenstein could be considered as the main narrator of the whole story.