Writers
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The Ways of White Folks
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A collection of vibrant and incisive short stories depicting the sometimes humorous, but more often tragic interactions between Black people and white people in America in the 1920s and '30s. One of the most important writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is best known as a poet, but these stories showcase his talent as a lively storyteller. His work blends elements of blues and jazz, speech and song, into a triumphant and wholly original idiom. Stories included in this collection: "Cora Unashamed" "Slave on the Block" "Home" "Passing" "A Good Job Gone" "Rejuvenation Through Joy" "The Blues I'm Playing" "Red-Headed Baby" "Poor Little Black Fellow" "Little Dog" "Berry" "Mother and Child" "One Christmas Eve" "Father and Son"
ISBN: 0679728171Publication Date: 1990 -
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The Big Sea
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Introduction by Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. InThe Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance." Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction toThe Big Sea, an American classic: "This is American writing at its best--simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."
ISBN: 0809015498Publication Date: 1993 -
The Block
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For both Langston Hughes and Romare Bearden, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem was a source of inspiration, and its sights and sounds are reflected in the art that each created. Now 13 of Hughes's most beloved poems are paired with Bearden's painting, The Block, in a dazzling celebration of city life.
ISBN: 067086501XPublication Date: 1995 -
Carol of the Brown King
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The wonder of Christmas never ceases. Each year the holiday comes and its story seems fresh and new. The ways of telling about the very first Christmas are as many and as varied as the stars in the sky. And so it was for Langston Hughes, who recounted those long-ago events in six different ways -- in live poems he wrote and in one he translated from the Spanish. In this memorable book, these six poems are simply and movingly illustrated by Ashley Bryan. That Christmas is for everyone -- young and old, black and white, rich and poor -- has never been more clearly shown. Though African American children -- and adults -- will find the book a special one for them, everyone who takes time to enjoy the book will come away with a new understanding of the holiday. Ashley Bryan has long been known for his interest in and illustration of African American spirituals and poetry. Here he puts his gifts of illustration to work in a way that seems to reflect his dedication to both.
ISBN: 0689818777Publication Date: 1998 -
Not Without Laughter
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A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, poet Hughes wrote only one novel -- but it is an incredibly powerful and moving work. This 1930s coming-of-age tale, which unfolds amid an African-American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.
ISBN: 9780486454481Publication Date: 2008 -
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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Langston Hughes has long been acknowledged as the voice, and his poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, the song, of the Harlem Renaissance. Although he was only seventeen when he composed it, Hughes already had the insight to capture in words the strength and courage of black people in America. Artist E.B. Lewis acts as interpreter and visionary, using watercolor to pay tribute to Hughes's timeless poem, a poem that every child deserves to know.
ISBN: 0786818670Publication Date: 2009 -
Sail Away
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A celebration of mermaids, wildernesses of waves, and the creatures of the deep through poems by Langston Hughes and cut-paper collage illustrations by multiple Coretta Scott King Award-winner Ashley Bryan. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes penned poem after poem about the majesty of the sea, and the great African-American artist Ashley Bryan, who's spent more than half his life on a small island, is as drawn to the sea as much as he draws the sea. Their talents combine in this windswept collection of illustrated poems--from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" to "Seascape," from "Sea Calm" to "Sea Charm"-- that celebrates all things oceanic.
ISBN: 9781481430852Publication Date: 2015 -
The Weary Blues
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Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem)--"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"--Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race . . . Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with precocious confidence and clarity. In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young suggests that Hughes from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing, and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it. We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America," but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as deeply. "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers / Of the world."
ISBN: 9780385352970Publication Date: 2015
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I Write What I Like
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In a series of essays on the politics and society of South Africa, the growth and development of Biko as a leader is depicted through a theme of black dignity and consciousness.
ISBN: 0906097495Publication Date: 1996 -
We Write What We Like
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A celebration of Steve Biko's legacy of freedom Steve Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness philosophy, was killed in prison on 12 September 1977. Biko was only thirty years old, but his ideas and political activities changed the course of South African history and helped hasten the end of apartheid. The year 2007 saw the thirtieth anniversary of Biko's death. To mark the occasion, the then Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Mosibudi Mangena, commissioned Chris van Wyk to compile an anthology of essays as a tribute to the great South African son. Among the contributors are Minister Mangena himself, ex-President Thabo Mbeki, writer Darryl Accone, journalists Lizeka Mda and Bokwe Mafuna, academics Jonathan Jansen, Mandla Seleoane and Saths Cooper, a friend of Biko's and former president of Azapo. We Write What We Like proudly echoes the title of Biko's seminal work, I Write What I Like. It is a gift to a new generation which enjoys freedom, from one that was there when this freedom was being fought for. And it celebrates the man whose legacy is the freedom to think and say and write what we like.
ISBN: 9781868144648Publication Date: 2007 -
Biko Lives!
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This collection looks at the on-going significance of Black Consciousness, situating it in a global frame, examining the legacy of Steve Biko, the current state of post-apartheid South African politics, and the culture and history of the anti-apartheid movements.
ISBN: 9780230606494Publication Date: 2008 -
Steve Biko
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A brief yet lively introduction to antiapartheid activist Steve Biko, this biography argues that Biko was the most important political figure to have emerged in South Africa between Nelson Mandela's arrest in the early 1960s and his release in 1990. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, this informative and accessible volume demonstrates just how fundamental Biko was to the transformation of South Africa in the second half of the 20th century--and how relevant he remains today. The book covers his life and thought, his influence and his legacy, as well as the impact Biko had on the Black Power movement.
ISBN: 9781770099630Publication Date: 2011 -
Fanonian Practices in South Africa
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Examines Frantz Fanon's relevance to contemporary South African politics and by extension research on postcolonial Africa and the tragic development of postcolonies. Scholar Nigel C. Gibson offers theoretically informed historical analysis, providing insights into the circumstances that led to the current hegemony of neoliberalism in South Africa.
ISBN: 0230117848Publication Date: 2011
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Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle
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"There is no true social revolution without the liberation of women," explains the leader of the 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso. Workers and peasants in that West African country established a popular revolutionary government and began to combat the hunger, illiteracy, and economic backwardness imposed by imperialist domination.
ISBN: 0873485858Publication Date: 1990 -
We are Heirs of the World's Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso
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"Our revolution in Burkina Faso draws on the totality of man's experiences since the first breath of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world, of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World. We draw the lessons of the American revolution. The French revolution taught us the rights of man. The great October revolution brought victory to the proletariat and made possible the realization of the Paris Commune's dreams of justice." Thomas Sankara, October 1984Thomas Sankara led the revolution of 1983 to 1987 in Burkina Faso. In the five speeches contained in this pamphlet, he explains how the peasants and workers of this West African country established a popular revolutionary government and began to fight the hunger, illiteracy and economic backwardness imposed by imperialist domination, and the oppression of women inherited from millennia of class society. In so doing, they have provided an example not only to the workers and small farmers of Africa, but to those of the entire world.
ISBN: 0873489462Publication Date: 2002 -
Thomas Sankara Speaks
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Under Sankara's leadership, the revolutionary government of Burkina Faso in West Africa mobilized peasants, workers, women, and youth to carry out literacy and immunization drives; to sink wells, plant trees, build dams, erect housing; to combat the oppression of women and transform exploitative relations on the land; to free themselves from the imperialist yoke and solidarize with others engaged in that fight internationally. Sankara speaks as an outstanding revolutionary leader of working people and youth the world over. Second edition includes a new introduction by editor Michel Prairie, foreword, maps, chronology and glossary, as well as an index. Thirty-two page photo section features many unpublished photos of the Burkina Faso revolution. Of the first edition, published by Pathfinder in 1988, Victoria Brittain wrote in the London Guardian, ?The courage and originality which made him and Burkina Faso the inspiration they were to so many Africans shine out of this collection of his most important speeches.' ?The originality of Sankara's ideas ? along with his awareness of the social and economic realities of his country, his understanding of the international relations of forces ? make this collection a highly useful tool. Expressed with passion and clarity, his views on the necessity of a new balance between the city and the countryside, on the crucial importance of the emancipation of women ? are in perfect keeping with the demands of the peoples of Africa today.'?Le Monde diplomatique
ISBN: 0873489861Publication Date: 2007 -
Thomas Sankara
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Thomas Sankara, often called the African Che Guevara, was president of Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, until his assassination during the military coup that brought down his government. Although his tenure in office was relatively short, Sankara left an indelible mark on his country's history and development. An avowed Marxist, he outspokenly asserted his country's independence from France and other Western powers while at the same time seeking to build a genuine pan-African unity. Ernest Harsch traces Sankara's life from his student days to his recruitment into the military, early political awakening, and increasing dismay with his country's extreme poverty and political corruption. As he rose to higher leadership positions, he used those offices to mobilize people for change and to counter the influence of the old, corrupt elites. Sankara and his colleagues initiated economic and social policies that shifted away from dependence on foreign aid and toward a greater use of the country's own resources to build schools, health clinics, and public works. Although Sankara's sweeping vision and practical reforms won him admirers both in Burkina Faso and across Africa, a combination of domestic opposition groups and factions within his own government and the army finally led to his assassination in 1987. This is the first English-language book to tell the story of Sankara's life and struggles, drawing on the author's extensive firsthand research and reporting on Burkina Faso, including interviews with the late leader. Decades after his death, Sankara remains an inspiration to young people throughout Africa for his integrity, idealism, and dedication to independence and self-determination.
ISBN: 9780821421260Publication Date: 2014 -
A Certain Amount of Madness: The Life, Politics, and Legacies of Thomas Sankara
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Thomas Sankara was one of Africa's most important anti-imperialist leaders of the late 20th Century. His declaration that fundamental socio-political change would require a 'certain amount of madness' drove the Burkinabe Revolution and resurfaced in the country's popular uprising in 2014.This book looks at Sankara's political philosophies and legacies and their relevance today. Analyses of his synthesis of Pan-Africanism and humanist Marxist politics, as well as his approach to gender, development, ecology and decolonisation offer new insights to Sankarist political philosophies. Critical evaluations of the limitations of the revolution examine his relationship with labour unions and other aspects of his leadership style. His legacy is revealed by looking at contemporary activists, artists and politicians who draw inspiration from Sankarist thought in social movement struggles today, from South Africa to Burkina Faso.In the 30th anniversary of his assassination, this book illustrates how Sankara's political praxis continues to provide lessons and hope for decolonisation struggles today.
ISBN: 9780745337579Publication Date: 2018
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Ake
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A book that tells of the author's experiences in Nigeria.
ISBN: 0394528077Publication Date: 1981 -
The Writing of Wole Soyinka
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The third edition of this authoritative study includes full coverage of Soyinka's second autobiographical book, Ake, book-by-book assessments of his collections of poetry, and detailed and helpful analyses of his novels, The Interpreters and A Season of Anomy.
ISBN: 0435080210Publication Date: 1987 -
The Blackman and the Veil
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ISBN: 9964721218Publication Date: 1993Lectures delivered by the Nobel Prize Winner, Wole Soyinka -
Wole Soyinka
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Conceived as a "fitting tribute" to the Nigerian writer on his 60th birthday, this collection is an effort to engage with Soyinka and his work at the critical level his achievement requires. The contributors, distinguished writers themselves, approach their task with eloquent analysis and thoughtful criticism.
ISBN: 0435911511Publication Date: 1994 -
Wole Soyinka
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The book reconsiders Soyinka's contribution to the debate about African identity, exploring the various elements constituting his distinctive aesthetic and apprehension of African culture. It concentrates on his plays, his fiction and poetry and investigates his views on the relationship between myth, history, and modernity, primarily highlighting his conception of the nature of African post-colonial society and power. Also, the book looks at Soyinka's exploration of the metaphysical aspects of evil, particularly as manifested in political violence, and, in addition, it examines his belief in the irrepressibility of the human desire to transcend any form of political, spiritual and social oppression. Finally, it argues that Soyinka's major contribution to our understanding of contemporary African life and art lies in his attempts to move beyond the idea of identity as an opposition between Self and Other to a conception of identity in which such concepts are either themselves questioned or transferred to a different frame or language where they are made to signify differently.
ISBN: 0746308116Publication Date: 1998 -
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
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Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is the most prominent writer from the African continent and one of the greatest living playwrights in the English language. His plays have been produced by the leading professional and repertory companies and stages in the English-speaking world including the National Theatre in Britain and the Lincoln Center in New York. At the same time, Soyinka has been the most consistent campaigner against civil and human rights violations and abuses, on occasion using his drama, poetry, and essays to speak out powerfully and eloquently in defense of the freedom of ordinary citizens and of the conscience and autonomy of the African continent's writers and intellectuals. Featuring interviews with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Anthony Appiah, and the editor, among others, Conversations with Wole Soyinka is the first collection of Soyinka's interviews. The volume helps to clarify the place of Soyinka in the canon of modern African literature and the international currents of world literature in English of the last half century. Within the interviews, Soyinka is forthright, clear, and eloquent. He specifically addresses many facets of his writing and plumbs pressing issues of culture, society, and community in the present period of increasing globalization. With interviewers in Africa, America, and the United Kingdom he discusses the rise of extreme nationalist and fundamentalist movements and ideologies in his homeland. In particular, the volume throws welcome light on many of the difficulties and obscurities of form and "message" that both academic and non-academic readers find in the most ambitious works of Soyinka. Soyinka says, "I never set out to be obscure. But complex subjects sometimes elicit from the writer complex treatments." Biodun Jeyifo is a professor of English at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY. His previous books include The Popular Traveling Theatre of Nigeria (1984) and The Truthful Lie (1985). He has been published in such periodicals as Stanford Literature Review, Research in African Literatures, and Callaloo.
ISBN: 157806337XPublication Date: 2001 -
The Poetry of Wole Soyinka
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The Nobel Laureate's reputation as a dramatist tends to cloud his poetic achievement, and in modern African literature, poetry lives in the shadow of fiction. The criticism of Soyinka's poetry has so far centred on his themes of individuality and death, his imagery, and on the controversy over his authenticity, obscurity and difficulty. Here, in a new approach, an academic himself and one of the leading younger generation of African poets, discusses critically the voice and viewpoint of the poet with the object of establishing Soyinka's persona. The book covers the personality and world view of the man, as revealed in his poetry.
ISBN: 9780230068Publication Date: 2002 -
Wole Soyinka
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Biodun Jeyifo examines the relationship between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo analyzes Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by his appropriation of literature and theater for radical political objectives. The evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the collective experience of violence in post-independence, post-colonial Africa.
ISBN: 9780511065385Publication Date: 2004
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Four Negro Poets byPublication Date: 1927
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Negro Art: Past and Present byPublication Date: 1936
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The Negro in Art; A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art byPublication Date: 1940
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Race Contacts and Interracial Relations by "Race Contacts and Interracial Relations comprises five lectures that Alain Locke, Howard University professor of philosophy and critic of the Harlem Renaissance, delivered in 1916 at Howard University. Locke examines race and racism in twentieth-century social relations and provides a means of analyzing race and ethnic conflict in relation to economic and political changes in society. He suggests that a way to understand racial conflict is to look at nonracial issues that divide a society and at how race becomes a symbol of those issues and conflicts." "Locke's early recognition and articulation of Franz Boas's theory of race in these lectures and his contention that racism is socially generated were intellectual departures at the time. While rejecting the biological basis of race, Locke proposes that the social concept of race could be employed by a minority as a cultural strategy for self-help and self-definition. Thus the lectures show that Locke's work in African American art and culture grew out of a considered analysis of race and modern society." "In the introduction to this carefully edited volume, Jeffrey Stewart provides background on Alain Locke and other theorists on race whom Locke discusses, situates Locke's ideas on race within the context of his time, and relates Locke's lectures to his thought on art and culture and to contemporary arguments on race."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights ReservedISBN: 0882581376Publication Date: 1992
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The New Negro
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From the man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance comes a powerful, provocative, and affecting anthology of writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance movement and who help us to consider the evolution of the African American in society. With stunning works by seminal black voices such as Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and W.E.B. DuBois, Locke has constructed a vivid look at the new negro, the changing African American finding his place in the ever shifting sociocultural landscape that was 1920s America. With poetry, prose, and nonfiction essays, this collection is widely praised for its literary strength as well as its historical coverage of a monumental and fascinating time in the history of America.
ISBN: 0684838311Publication Date: 1999 -
The Philosophy of Alain Locke
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This collection of essays by American philosopher Alain Locke (1885-1954) makes readily available for the first time his important writings on cultural pluralism, value relativism, and critical relativism. As a black philosopher early in this century, Locke was a pioneer: having earned both undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Harvard, he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, studied at the University of Berlin, and chaired the Philosophy Department at Howard University for almost four decades. He was perhaps best known as a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Locke's works in philosophy--many previously unpublished--conceptually frame the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro movement and provide an Afro-American critique of pragmatism and value absolutism, and also offer a view of identity, communicative competency, and contextualism. In addition, his major works on the nature of race, race relations, and the role of race-conscious literature are presented to demonstrate the application of his philosophy. Locke's commentaries on the major philosophers of his day, including James, Royce, Santayana, Perry, and Ehrenfels help tell the story of his relationship to his former teachers and his theoretical affinities. In his substantial Introduction and interpretive concluding chapter, Leonard Harris describes Locke's life, evaluates his role as an American philosopher and theoretician of the Harlem Renaissance, situates him in the pragmatist tradition, and outlines his affinities with modern deconstructionist ideas. A chronology of the philosopher's life and bibliography of his works are also provided. Although much has been written about Alain Locke, this is the first book to focus on his philosophical contributions.
ISBN: 9781439904367Publication Date: 2010 -
Alain L. Locke
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Alain L. Locke (1886-1954), in his famous 1925 anthology "The" "New Negro," declared that OC the pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.OCO Often called the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had his finger directly on that pulse, promoting, influencing, and sparring with such figures as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barth(r), William Grant Still, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, and John Dewey. The long-awaited first biography of this extraordinarily gifted philosopher and writer, "Alain L. Locke "narrates the untold story of his profound impact on twentieth-century AmericaOCOs cultural and intellectual life. aLeonard Harris and Charles Molesworth trace this story through LockeOCOs Philadelphia upbringing, his undergraduate years at HarvardOCowhere William James helped spark his influential engagement with pragmatismOCoand his tenure as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. The heart of their narrative illuminates LockeOCOs heady years in 1920s New York City and his forty-year career at Howard University, where he helped spearhead the adult education movement of the 1930s and wrote on topics ranging from the philosophy of value to the theory of democracy. Harris and Molesworth show that throughout this illustrious careerOCodespite a formal manner that many observers interpreted as elitist or distantOCoLocke remained a warm and effective teacher and mentor, as well as a fierce champion of literature and art as means of breaking down barriers between communities. aThe multifaceted portrait that emerges from this engaging account effectively reclaims LockeOCOs rightful place in the pantheon of AmericaOCOs most important minds.
ISBN: 9780226317809Publication Date: 2010 -
The Works of Alain Locke
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With the publication of The New Negro in 1925, Alain Locke introduced readers all over the U.S. to the vibrant world of African American thought. As an author, editor, and patron, Locke rightly earned the appellation "Godfather of the Harlem Renaissance." Yet, his intellectual contributionsextend far beyond that single period of cultural history. Throughout his life he penned essays, on topics ranging from John Keats to Sigmund Freud, in addition to his trenchant social commentary on race and society.The Works of Alain Locke provides the largest collection available of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. They cover an impressively broad field of subjects: philosophy, literature, the visual arts, music, the theory of value, race, politics, and multiculturalism.Alongside seminal works such as "The New Negro" the volume features essays like "The Ethics of Culture," "Apropos of Africa," and "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy." Together, these writings demonstrate Locke's standing as the leading African American thinker between W. E. B. Du Bois and MartinLuther King, Jr.The foreword is by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
ISBN: 9780199795048Publication Date: 2012 -
The New Negro
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Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography Winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro -- the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. Locke also received a cosmopolitan, aesthetic education through his travels in continental Europe, where he came to appreciate the beauty of art and experienced a freedom unknown to him in the United States. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America and his promotion of the literary and artistic work of African Americans as the quintessential creations of American modernism. In the process he looked to Africa to find the proud and beautiful roots of the race. Shifting the discussion of race from politics and economics to the arts, he helped establish the idea that Black urban communities could be crucibles of creativity. Stewart explores both Locke's professional and private life, including his relationships with his mother, his friends, and his white patrons, as well as his lifelong search for love as a gay man. Stewart's thought-provoking biography recreates the worlds of this illustrious, enigmatic man who, in promoting the cultural heritage of Black people, became -- in the process -- a New Negro himself.
ISBN: 9780195089578Publication Date: 2018
