Additional information
by Houston a. Baker (Author)
When Houston A. Baker Jr. one of America's foremost literary critics, first published Afro-American Poetics in 1988, it was hailed as a major revisionist history of both African American culture and criticism. Now available in paperback, this ambitious and enlightening book juxtaposes two of the most fertile periods of African American culture, the 1920s and the 1960s; it includes essays on Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Hoyt Fuller. This is also Baker's most personal book, an intellectual autobiography tracing his own beginnings as a scholar of Victorian literature, his "second birth" as he began teaching African American literature, and his visions and revisions of a black aesthetic.
Back Jacket
Now available in paperback, this ambitious book juxtaposes two of the most fertile periods of African American culture, the 1920's and the 1960's; it includes essays on Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Hoyt Fuller. This is also Baker's most personal book, tracing his beginnings as a scholar of Victorian literature, his 'second birth' as he began teaching African American Literature, and his visions and revisions of a black aesthetic.
Author Biography
Houston A. Baker, Jr., is professor of English, Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, and director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania. His many books of criticism include Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance and Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature, and he has published three collections of poems. He is also the editor of many books, including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
