644 The American Century: Literature since 1945systems. Plays such as S-1 (1974) and The Motion of History (1977) testify to the
change. And works like Hard Facts (1975), Poetry for the Advanced (1979), and
Daggers and Javelins (1984) show his efforts to reconcile the more positive and useful
aspects of black nationalism with what he saw as the scientific accuracy of Marxism.
Later publications show that effort continuing: among them, Eulogies (1996), Funk
Love: New Poems, 1984–1995 (1996), and The Autobiography of Leroi Jones/Amiri
Baraka (1997). As an organizer and activist, he has continued, ever since the 1960s,
to influence immeasurably the direction of African-American thought and writing.
As a writer in particular, though, Baraka’s main contribution has been to
encourage a generation to be unapologetic, even proud and aggressive, about their
African-American heritage. Particularly in the writing of the 1960s and early 1970s,
he introduced a prophetic, apocalyptic dimension into black writing: a sense of
mission, the violent redemption of the sins of the past in the revolutionary future.
“We want poems that kill,” he announced in “Black Art,” “Assassin poems. Poems
that shoot / guns.” “Let there be no love poems written /,” he added, “until love can
exist freely and / clearly.” What Baraka anticipated was nothing less than a “jihad” or
holy war of believers against unbelievers, black against white (“Come up, black
dada / nihilismus. Rape the white girls / Rape the fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats”).
From this holocaust, this ritual bloodletting of all that is false and dead – that is,
specifically, white Christian civilization – little would survive. But creation would
nevertheless follow destruction. Primal innocence and energy would be restored;
and a new nation would emerge out of the union between black power in America
and anticolonialist movements in Africa. “It’s nation time eye ime,” Baraka sang
triumphantly in the poem of that title: “it’s nation ti eye ime / chant with bells and
drum / its nation time.” In a way, this was the American dream in bright new pan-
African robes: liberation from the present tyranny, the poet hoped, would be
accompanied by a recovery of the perfection of the past and its restitution for an
imagined future. There was no place for whites here, certainly: “white people,”
we are told, “... are full of, and made of / shit.” But, ironically, Baraka still reflected
the millennial tendencies of a culture he was determined to reject.
As for that determination itself, Baraka’s conscious need to reject Western culture
was real enough. Apart from certain crucial aspects of that culture, notably Marxism
and socialism, it still remains one of his dominating motives. He could not entirely
unlearn his American education, or excise those portions of himself that had
been shaped by traditional or apolitical white culture, but he tried hard to do so.
“When I die, / the consciousness I carry I will to / black people,” he wrote in “Leroy.”
“May they pick me apart and take the / useful parts ... And leave / the bitter bullshit
rotten white parts / alone.” The process of excision was, in effect, to be continued
after his death: the few, lingering traces of white identity were to be left to decay
while the rest, “the sweet meat” of the black self, was to achieve a strictly carnal res-
urrection, growing in and through the bodies of others. As far as active practice was
concerned, this insistence on “Black feeling, Black mind, Black judgment” led Baraka
not only to political involvement but to the promotion of black community theater.
With his help, the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School was opened in Harlem inGGray_c05.indd 644ray_c 05 .indd 644 8 8/1/2011 7:31:36 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 36 PM