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Amiri Baraka
A Vanguard in the Black Arts
Movement
 A
poet, writer, political activist and teacher, Amiri Baraka is one of the
nation's most influential and prolific African American artists. A vanguard
in the Black arts movement, he has published numerous volumes of poetry,
fiction, non-fiction, drama, and anthologies. Over the last five decades, he
has also edited several important literary magazines and journals.
His most recent books include Eulogies, a collection of eulogies he has given
over the past 20 years, Why's/Wise, an anthology of poetry, and Jesse
Jackson and Black People, a book of essays about Jackson and the African
American people's struggle for democracy and self-determination. His classic
study of African American self-determination, The Black Nation, was also
recently reprinted.
Baraka is co-director, with his wife Amina Baraka, of Kimako's Blues People,
an arts space in Newark. In May 2002, he was appointed as Poet Laureate of
the state of New Jersey for a two-year term. He has also been honored with
numerous other literary prizes and honors including fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the
PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama.
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