Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings

``What we have been trying to arrive at is some kind of synthesis of the writer's function as an oppressed individual and a creative artist,'' states Neal (1937-1981), a writer, editor, educator and activist prominent in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and '70s. Articulate, highly charged essays about the black experience examine the views of his predecessors--musicians and political theorists as well as writers--continually weighing artistic achievement against political efficacy. While the essays do not exclude any readers, Neal's drama, poetry and fiction are more limited in their form of address, more explicitly directed to the oppressed. The poems are particularly intense in their protest: ``How many of them / . . . have been made to /prostitute their blood / to the merchants of war.'' Rhythmic and adopting the repetitive structure of music, they capture the ``blues in our mothers' voices / which warned us / blues people bursting out.'' Commentaries by Neal's peers, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Crouch, Charles Fuller and Jayne Cortez, introduce the various sections. (July)