#amiri baraka
New Arrivals: Sharp copy of YUGEN 7 (1961).
Sixth issue (of eight) of this important little magazine edited by LeRoi Jones. Contributors to this issue include Jones, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, Gilbert Sorrentino, Diane DiPrima, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Whalen, et al.
Post link
#IstantaneeDalPassato | #FlashbackFriday:
Amiri Baraka eMaya Angelou; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1991.
Foto:Chester Higgins, Jr.
«As I watched, Amiri Baraka asked Maya Angelou to dance and walked her to the “I’ve Known Rivers” Cosmogram — the focal point of the celebration, newly set into the floor over the ashes of Langston Hughes. As the two poets danced, the energy of the crowd focused on them. The room came alive as everyone applauded.
In this impromptu tribute to Langston Hughes,I believe these two African-American icons created a moment that reflected our collective love for poets of African descent and the continuity of African creative genius.»(A Dance of Rivers, Chester Higgins, Jr.)
Post link
![‘The Moderns’, edited and with an introduction by LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Corinth Books, New Yor](https://64.media.tumblr.com/c5831f8881c6837db53fd442cafb4bc0/tumblr_nyqg59zDvC1tegr1eo1_1280.jpg "‘The Moderns’, edited and with an introduction by LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Corinth Books, New Yor")
‘The Moderns’, edited and with an introduction by LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka],Corinth Books, New York, 1963.
Post link
I loved Yuri’s courage, humility and clarity. She moved me, and my Ethnic Studies Students at SF State, to learn about my own history, to develop empathy and SOLIDARITY for other oppressed people, and to build UNITY and to STRUGGLE against our common enemies. But now her death is hitting me even harder when I connect it to the recent passing of others like Maya Angelou, Vincent Harding, Amiri Baraka, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, Mandela and local SF Bay Area movement friends Carl Bloice and Karega Hart. But I know Yuri, Amiri, Carl and Karega would have cautioned us against mourning and encouraged us to continue rebuilding our movements together for a new world for all our children.
Eric Mar is a member of the SF Board of Supervisors, the former President of the SF Board of Education and a longtime social justice activist.
I had this crazy dream last night.
Yuri Kochiyama and Amiri Baraka were up in heaven…playing Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond in a game of 2-on-2 basketball.
The stakes? Dismantling the segregated institutions of heaven. Why all the clouds gotta be white? Baraka asks. Why all the white angels get the nice harps, and we get these hand-me-down purgatory ukeleles?
The score is tied. 14-14. Next basket wins.
Yuri looks at Baraka like, Don’t worry, my dude. I got this.
She dribbles the ball slowly up the cloudy court. Then, quick as lightning, Yuri puts the ball between her legs, flies over Reagan, karate chops Strom Thurmond in the face with one hand, wipes ups his tears with her other hand, does a triple somersault in the air, and dunks the ball so hard, the basket explodes - BOOM! - like the echo of a Harlem gunshot.
Baraka looks over at Yuri, grinning like a well-fed cat. That’s what I’m talking about, girl. Wish the Knicks knew how to play like that.
From the sideline, Maya Angelou whistles her approval. Phenomenal, she says. Simply phenomenal.
Reagan scrapes himself off the floor, tries to regain his composure. Whatever. Y’all wanna run again?
Yuri looks down to Earth. At her people, her nation of struggle and pain and possibility, still fighting the fight she fought for damn near a century. She just got here, to this city in the stars. Doesn’t she deserve some time to rest her feet?
Maybe later, but right now, she’s staring down the man who drove half her closest friends to jail or drugs or an early grave. And up here, he doesn’t have Secret Service to defend him in the paint. Yuri is more than happy to take it right to him and his buddy Strom. Shit, she could do this forever.
Winner takes ball, she says. Let’s go, Ronnie. Game on.
Josh Healey is a writer, performer, and creative activist. He is currently spreading political art and subversive humor with the good folks at Movement Generation. He lives in Oakland and plays a mean game of spades.
