The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader

Book excerpt: 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 This essential anthology also contains previously unpublished work-including essays on Jesse Jackson & James Baldwin-as well as a chronology & a full bibliography.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.