African-American author (1934-2014)
We did take the city away from the lowest level, and if the next level is sickening, the task is of a higher order.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Hope is delicate suffering.
AMIRI BARAKA
Cold, Hurt, and Sorrow
What was most important about the survivors was our will to be more than those streets proposed.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
The games and sports of the playground and streets was one registration carried with us as long as we live. Our conduct, strategies, and tactics, our ranking and comradeship. Our wins and losses.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Growing up was a maze of light and darkness to me. I never fully understood the purpose of childhood. Baby pictures nonplussed me. It looks like me a little, I thought. But what the hell, I didn't know nuthin'. It ain't that cute. Falling back like that, toothless grimace, mouth bare, legs bent, fat with diapers. And them probably wet.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
I heard heroes and saw them in my mind and imagined what evil was and cheered at its destruction. In the movies too, in film after film, evil could be destroyed.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
I am inside someone who hates me. I look out from his eyes.
AMIRI BARAKA
"An Agony. As Now", Transbluesency
The reason for the remarkable development of the rhythmic qualities of African music can certainly be traced to the fact that Africans also used drums for communication; and not, as was once thought, merely by using the drums in a kind of primitive Morse code, but by the phonetic reproduction of the words themselves--the result being that Africans developed an extremely fine and extremely complex rhythmic sense.
AMIRI BARAKA
Blues People
All the lovely things I've known have disappeared.
AMIRI BARAKA
"Look for You Yesterday, Her You Come Today"