Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

Fire ; steal it, borrow it or wait for it to appear in paperback. Hopefully,
we can, as a people, move toward a black printing company so
that we will not have to continuously run to the Establishment presses
to be published .
Finally, this is u ; yr/momma, yr/history, yr/literature . Them is u,
actually, a beautiful reflection . Understood by u alone . Others will
not . Our creations are ours . No one can really take away yr/innerself,
if u have one . People can napalm other people because they never
felt the pain of flesh falling off one's body . George Washington is
their hero because there is No-thing better. The Mod Squad and Julia
are forced upon u in prime t .v . time because that is their reality, not
ours . The Great White Hope is just that, the great white hope . Our
heroes will be named Willie, bigger thomas, blood, pee wee and maniac
and will come out of the projects and be hip to Richard Nixon and
Lyndon Johnson . Because their fathers were hip to them and their
fathers' fathers . Fathers and on and on .
LeRoi Jones said it :
NEGRO DIGEST Mareh 1969
These are the words of lovers :
Of dancers, of dynamite singers
These are songs if you have
the music .
this is u, thisis u, thisisu, thisisu, go ahead, now .
-Dory L . LEE
Dark
Anyone who wears $25 shoes
would do well to purchase a $16
pair, ride them to your nearest bookstore,
and invest the difference wisely.
Dark Symphony (Free Press, $8 :95),
an anthology edited by James A .
Emanuel and Theodore L . Gross, is
a must for anyone who happens not
to be an authority on black literature
-and no doubt the authorities, few
that they are, have already added it
to their libraries . A total of 34 black
authors, 14 of whom are deceased,
are represented in the 604-page book
of short stories, essays, poetry, and
criticism. The book is divided into
four sections : Early Literature ; The
Negro Awakening; Major Authors ;
and Contemporary Literature . Not
the least of its merits are the lucid,
informative introductions to three
Symphony
sections (There is no introduction to
Major Authors) . Essay-like biographical
sketches on the four selectees
as Major Authors (Langston
Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison
and James Baldwin) provide perceptive
commentary on their many
works . Shorter biographical sketches
are included in the case of each of
the other contributors . Clearly the
editors did not, in this case, request
of the authors a contribution of their
own choosing . The editors did the
selecting, and they were selective,
and even though the reader might on
occasion wish they had selected a
different work by a particular writer,
he must appreciate their having for
the most part provided insights into
the reasoning that led to their choices.
Included in Early Literature are
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