Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic
- Book Review,
by Houston A. Baker
From Publishers Weekly
Baker envisages the mission of black culture since the 1920s as "Afro-American spirit work." In the blues, the postmodernist "chant poem," the oratory of Malcolm X and the political plays of Amiri Baraka, he notes the unfolding creation of a "racial epic" in which black Americans may discover their place in U.S. society and find their ancestral roots. These six challenging essays by the director of the University of Pennsylvania's black studies center build upon the themes of his 1987 book, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Professor Baker analyzes Jean Toomer's stream-of-consciousness protest novel Cane , ponders why apolitical poet Countee Cullen became a voice of the people and pays tribute to critic-poet Larry Neal and to Hoyt Fuller, the editor of Negro Digest who allied himself with the Black Arts movement. He also traces his own shift from "guerrilla theater revolutionary" to embattled theoretician. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Michael Awkward, University of Michigan
"Baker's is a fascinating portrait of the literary critic as blues artist, reconstructing the products of two amazingly fruitful decades of engagement with Afro-American expressive culture in illuminating autobiographical examinations of his own-and indeed, Afro-American criticism's-momentous changes over that period of time."-Michael Awkward, University of Michigan
Peter Nazareth, World Literature Today
"Readers who do not know much about black American literature would learn a great deal from Afro-American Poetics; those who do would be further enlightened."-Peter Nazareth, World Literature Today
Eugene Kraft, Callaloo
"For this student of black literature, the final impact of Afro-American Poetics is overwhelming. We now have the beginnings of a superstructure upon which to gauge individual pieces of black literature."-Eugene Kraft, Callaloo
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
"Baker explores in fine and splendid detail the dialectic between self and other, rhetoric and representation, "high" theory and the Black vernacular, to chart the evolution of Afro-American literary criticism since 1970."-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
Book Description
When Houston A. Baker, Jr., one of Americas foremost literary critics, first published Afro-American Poetics in 1988, it was hailed as a major revisionist history of both African American culture and criticism. Now available in paperback, this ambitious and enlightening book juxtaposes two of the most fertile periods of African American culture, the 1920s and the 1960s; it includes essays on Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Hoyt Fuller. This is also Bakers most personal book, an intellectual autobiography tracing his own beginnings as a scholar of Victorian literature, his second birth as he began teaching African American literature, and his visions and revisions of a black aesthetic. From reviews of the hardcover edition Baker explores in fine and splendid detail the dialectic between self and other, rhetoric and representation, high theory and the Black vernacular, to chart the evolution of Afro-American literary criticism since 1970.Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University Bakers is a fascinating portrait of the literary critic as blues artist, reconstructing the products of two amazingly fruitful decades of engagement with Afro-American expressive culture in illuminating autobiographical examinations of his ownand indeed, Afro-American criticismsmomentous changes over that period of time.Michael Awkward, University of Michigan Readers who do not know much about black American literature would learn a great deal from Afro-American Poetics; those who do would be further enlightened.Peter Nazareth, World Literature Today For this student of black literature, the final impact of Afro-American Poetics is overwhelming. We now have the beginnings of a superstructure upon which to gauge individual pieces of black literature.Eugene Kraft, Callaloo
From the Publisher
Winner of the 1989-90 College Language Association Award for Outstanding Scholarship
About the Author
Houston A. Baker, Jr., is professor of English, Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, and director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania. His many books of criticism include Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance and Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature, and he has published three collections of poems. He is also the editor of many books, including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
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