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Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement

Edited by Verner D. Mitchell and Cynthia Davis

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) encompassed a group of artists, musicians, novelists, and playwrights whose work combined innovative approaches to literature, film, music, visual arts, and theatre. With a heightened consciousness of black agency and autonomy—along with the radical politics of the civil rights movement, the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers—these figures represented a collective effort to defy the status quo of American life and culture. Between the late 1950s and the end of the 1970s, the movement produced some of America’s most original and controversial artists and intellectuals.

In
Encyclopedia of the Blacks Arts Movement, Verner D. Mitchell and Cynthia Davis have collected essays on the key figures of the movement, including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Larry Neal, Sun Ra, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, and Archie Shepp. Additional entries focus on Black Theatre magazine, the Negro Ensemble Company, lesser known individuals—including Kathleen Collins, Tom Dent, Bill Gunn, June Jordan, and Barbara Ann Teer—and groups, such as AfriCOBRA and the New York Umbra Poetry Workshop.

The Black Arts Movement represented the most prolific expression of African American literature since the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Featuring essays by contemporary scholars and rare photographs of BAM artists,
Encyclopedia of the Blacks Arts Movement is an essential reference for students and scholars of twentieth-century American literature and African American cultural studies.
  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Features
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 410 • Trim: 7⅜ x 10¼
978-1-5381-0145-2 • Hardback • May 2019 • $153.00 • (£119.00)
978-1-5381-0146-9 • eBook • May 2019 • $145.00 • (£112.00)
Subjects: Art / Reference, Art / American / African American, History / African American, Reference / Encyclopedias, Performing Arts / Reference, Literary Collections / American / African American
Verner D. Mitchell is professor of English at the University of Memphis. He is the editor of This Waiting for Love: Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance (2006) and coauthor (with Cynthia Davis) of four subsequent books on women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. His work has appeared in Studies in American Culture, African American Review, American Literary History,and other journals.

Cynthia Davis is professor of English at San Jacinto College in Houston, Texas, where she specializes in Caribbean and African American literatures. Her publications include Where the Wild Grape Grows: Selected Writings by Dorothy West (2004), Western Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance: The Life and Writings of Anita Scott Coleman (2008), and Literary Sisters: Dorothy West and Her Circle (2011).

Mitchell and Davis are the authors of
Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography of Works and Criticism (Scarecrow Press, 2013).
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction by LaToya R. Jefferson-James
Timeline
Entries

AfriCOBRA
Allen, Samuel
Angelou, Maya
Baldwin, James
“Ballad of Birmingham”
Bambara, Toni Cade
Baraka, Amiri
Black Aesthetic, The
Black Arts Movement in Algeria, The
“Black Dada Nihilismus”
Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing
Black Theatre Issue of
The Drama Review
Black Theatre Magazine
Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation
Black Women Writers and the Black Arts Movement
“Blues Ain’t No Mockin’ Bird”
Blues for Mister Charlie
Broadside Press
“Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon, A”
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Bullins, Ed
Caldwell, Ben
Caribbean Artists Movement
Catherine Carmier
Childress, Alice
Chisholm, Shirley
Coleman, Wanda
Collins, Kathleen
Davis, Angela
Deacons for Defense and Justice
Dent, Tom
Dodson, Owen
Du Bois, W. E. B.
Dutchman
Evans, Mari
Evans-Charles, Martie
Fire Next Time, The
for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
Free-Lance Pallbearers, The

Gaines, Ernest J.
Giovanni, Nikki
Gunn, Bill
Hansberry, Lorraine
Hayden, Robert
Henderson, David
Hopkinson, Nalo
Jordan, June
Kennedy, Adrienne
Kgositsile, Keorapetse William
Knight, Etheridge
Last Poets, The
“Lesson, The"
Malcolm X
Malcolm X, Poetry on
Marginalization and the Black Arts Movement
Marson, Una
Milner, Ron
“Monday in B-Flat”
Morrison, Toni
Mumbo Jumbo
Music and the Black Arts Movement
Neal, Larry
Negro Digest / Black World / First World
Negro Ensemble Company, The
No Place to Be Somebody
One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Organization of Black American Culture
Polite, Carlene Hatcher
Ra, Sun
Raisin in the Sun, A
Randall, Dudley
“Raymond’s Run”
Redmond, Eugene B.
Rodgers, Carolyn
Ross, Fran
Sanchez, Sonia
Sexual Identity and the Black Arts Movement
Shange, Ntozake
Shepp, Archie
Slave, The
Smith, Jean Wheeler
Society of Umbra, The
“Sonny’s Blues”
Soul on Ice
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Teer, Barbara Ann
This Child’s Gonna Live
Thomas, Lorenzo
Till, Poetry on Emmett
Touré, Askia Muhammad
Tupac Shakur and the Black Arts Movement
Understanding the New Black Poetry
Voodoo Aesthetics and the Black Arts Movement
Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Editors and Contributors

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) of the 1960s and early 1970s was the artistic and aesthetic side of the Black Power Movement. BAM was perhaps more global in scale and remains a subject of scholarly and intellectual interest to this day. Mitchell (Univ. of Memphis) and Davis (San Jacinto College), both professors of English and accomplished specialists in African American literature, have compiled an incisive, captivating history of this radical political and social movement, which raised race consciousness through art and was a unique 20th-century artistic movement. Arranged alphabetically, entries cover political and social leaders, artists, authors, works, and major themes of the movement; this compendium is an excellent introduction to and summary of BAM. Topics such as black women writers, marginalization, sexual identity, voodoo aesthetics, student nonviolence, poetry on Emmett Till, and the black aesthetic are cogent and well summarized. Influential longer works merit attention, but significant short stories and poems—for example, James Baldwin's “Sonny’s Blues" and Amiri Baraka's “Monday in B-Flat”—also have their own entries. Each entry includes suggestions for further reading. The encyclopedia includes a brief foreword and preface, a time line, and a helpful index.



Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.
— Choice Reviews


3/5/2020: Library Journal named the book one of their Can't Miss Print Titles of 2019!

Link: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=best-print-reference-2019

Thirty photos, including some from private collections

Foreword by LaToya R. Jefferson-James

Nearly 100 entries

Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement

Cover Image
Hardback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • The Black Arts Movement (BAM) encompassed a group of artists, musicians, novelists, and playwrights whose work combined innovative approaches to literature, film, music, visual arts, and theatre. With a heightened consciousness of black agency and autonomy—along with the radical politics of the civil rights movement, the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers—these figures represented a collective effort to defy the status quo of American life and culture. Between the late 1950s and the end of the 1970s, the movement produced some of America’s most original and controversial artists and intellectuals.

    In
    Encyclopedia of the Blacks Arts Movement, Verner D. Mitchell and Cynthia Davis have collected essays on the key figures of the movement, including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Larry Neal, Sun Ra, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, and Archie Shepp. Additional entries focus on Black Theatre magazine, the Negro Ensemble Company, lesser known individuals—including Kathleen Collins, Tom Dent, Bill Gunn, June Jordan, and Barbara Ann Teer—and groups, such as AfriCOBRA and the New York Umbra Poetry Workshop.

    The Black Arts Movement represented the most prolific expression of African American literature since the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Featuring essays by contemporary scholars and rare photographs of BAM artists,
    Encyclopedia of the Blacks Arts Movement is an essential reference for students and scholars of twentieth-century American literature and African American cultural studies.
Details
Details
  • Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
    Pages: 410 • Trim: 7⅜ x 10¼
    978-1-5381-0145-2 • Hardback • May 2019 • $153.00 • (£119.00)
    978-1-5381-0146-9 • eBook • May 2019 • $145.00 • (£112.00)
    Subjects: Art / Reference, Art / American / African American, History / African American, Reference / Encyclopedias, Performing Arts / Reference, Literary Collections / American / African American
Author
Author
  • Verner D. Mitchell is professor of English at the University of Memphis. He is the editor of This Waiting for Love: Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance (2006) and coauthor (with Cynthia Davis) of four subsequent books on women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. His work has appeared in Studies in American Culture, African American Review, American Literary History,and other journals.

    Cynthia Davis is professor of English at San Jacinto College in Houston, Texas, where she specializes in Caribbean and African American literatures. Her publications include Where the Wild Grape Grows: Selected Writings by Dorothy West (2004), Western Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance: The Life and Writings of Anita Scott Coleman (2008), and Literary Sisters: Dorothy West and Her Circle (2011).

    Mitchell and Davis are the authors of
    Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography of Works and Criticism (Scarecrow Press, 2013).
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgements
    Preface
    Introduction by LaToya R. Jefferson-James
    Timeline
    Entries

    AfriCOBRA
    Allen, Samuel
    Angelou, Maya
    Baldwin, James
    “Ballad of Birmingham”
    Bambara, Toni Cade
    Baraka, Amiri
    Black Aesthetic, The
    Black Arts Movement in Algeria, The
    “Black Dada Nihilismus”
    Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing
    Black Theatre Issue of
    The Drama Review
    Black Theatre Magazine
    Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation
    Black Women Writers and the Black Arts Movement
    “Blues Ain’t No Mockin’ Bird”
    Blues for Mister Charlie
    Broadside Press
    “Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon, A”
    Brooks, Gwendolyn
    Bullins, Ed
    Caldwell, Ben
    Caribbean Artists Movement
    Catherine Carmier
    Childress, Alice
    Chisholm, Shirley
    Coleman, Wanda
    Collins, Kathleen
    Davis, Angela
    Deacons for Defense and Justice
    Dent, Tom
    Dodson, Owen
    Du Bois, W. E. B.
    Dutchman
    Evans, Mari
    Evans-Charles, Martie
    Fire Next Time, The
    for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
    Free-Lance Pallbearers, The

    Gaines, Ernest J.
    Giovanni, Nikki
    Gunn, Bill
    Hansberry, Lorraine
    Hayden, Robert
    Henderson, David
    Hopkinson, Nalo
    Jordan, June
    Kennedy, Adrienne
    Kgositsile, Keorapetse William
    Knight, Etheridge
    Last Poets, The
    “Lesson, The"
    Malcolm X
    Malcolm X, Poetry on
    Marginalization and the Black Arts Movement
    Marson, Una
    Milner, Ron
    “Monday in B-Flat”
    Morrison, Toni
    Mumbo Jumbo
    Music and the Black Arts Movement
    Neal, Larry
    Negro Digest / Black World / First World
    Negro Ensemble Company, The
    No Place to Be Somebody
    One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X
    Organization of Black American Culture
    Polite, Carlene Hatcher
    Ra, Sun
    Raisin in the Sun, A
    Randall, Dudley
    “Raymond’s Run”
    Redmond, Eugene B.
    Rodgers, Carolyn
    Ross, Fran
    Sanchez, Sonia
    Sexual Identity and the Black Arts Movement
    Shange, Ntozake
    Shepp, Archie
    Slave, The
    Smith, Jean Wheeler
    Society of Umbra, The
    “Sonny’s Blues”
    Soul on Ice
    Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
    Teer, Barbara Ann
    This Child’s Gonna Live
    Thomas, Lorenzo
    Till, Poetry on Emmett
    Touré, Askia Muhammad
    Tupac Shakur and the Black Arts Movement
    Understanding the New Black Poetry
    Voodoo Aesthetics and the Black Arts Movement
    Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine
    Selected Bibliography
    Index
    About the Editors and Contributors
Reviews
Reviews
  • The Black Arts Movement (BAM) of the 1960s and early 1970s was the artistic and aesthetic side of the Black Power Movement. BAM was perhaps more global in scale and remains a subject of scholarly and intellectual interest to this day. Mitchell (Univ. of Memphis) and Davis (San Jacinto College), both professors of English and accomplished specialists in African American literature, have compiled an incisive, captivating history of this radical political and social movement, which raised race consciousness through art and was a unique 20th-century artistic movement. Arranged alphabetically, entries cover political and social leaders, artists, authors, works, and major themes of the movement; this compendium is an excellent introduction to and summary of BAM. Topics such as black women writers, marginalization, sexual identity, voodoo aesthetics, student nonviolence, poetry on Emmett Till, and the black aesthetic are cogent and well summarized. Influential longer works merit attention, but significant short stories and poems—for example, James Baldwin's “Sonny’s Blues" and Amiri Baraka's “Monday in B-Flat”—also have their own entries. Each entry includes suggestions for further reading. The encyclopedia includes a brief foreword and preface, a time line, and a helpful index.



    Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.
    — Choice Reviews


Features
Features
  • 3/5/2020: Library Journal named the book one of their Can't Miss Print Titles of 2019!

    Link: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=best-print-reference-2019

    Thirty photos, including some from private collections

    Foreword by LaToya R. Jefferson-James

    Nearly 100 entries

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