About

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) was a writer of fiction, poetry, drama, political essays, and music criticism, and a founding member of the Black Arts Movement in the United States (which started in Harlem in the mid-1960s). His books include Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), Wise, Why’s Y’s (1995), Tales of the Out & the Gone (2006), and many others. Listen to Baraka read from his poem Why is We Americans here.