Race
Race in the New York School
Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, John Yau, Jayne Cortez, and Lorenzo Thomas are all united by their marginalization from white society, especially within the New York School. They faced discrimination, oppression, and violence in their personal and professional lives. In reaction to these experiences, many of these poets chose to write stylistically frank, forceful depictions of racial inequality and oppression in an attempt to dismantle systemic racism. These writers' intersections with the New York School and their vital work within the Black Arts Movement and the Society of Umbra are important interventions in American poetry and poetics.
Amiri Baraka in 1972. Courtesy of Julian C. Wilson/AP.
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) is one of the most divisive poets to come out of the late 20th century. Many have praised him for his ardent support of civil rights, but also come under fire for perceived inequity in how his work addressed Jews, women, and others. Following a controversy related to Baraka's poem about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, "Somebody Blew Up America," the governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, demanded that Baraka resign his post as Poet Laureate of the state. How did he become the Baraka we know today?
"America is as much a Black country as a white one. The lives and destinies of the white American are bound up inextricably with those of the Black American."
-Amiri Baraka
Ishmael Reed (1938-Present) is a well-known African American activists of the mid 1900s into the 2000s. His earliest collections include Conjure, a mix of his best music and inspirational works, and Chattanooga, works inspired from Reed’s view of injustice in American society. He has been called “the master of collage,” able to weave numerous ideas and styles into his works and collections. Even as an individual, Reed was a collage as he spread his time between writing poetry, being a contributor and editor for multiple newspapers, and being a full time activist for African American rights. He continues to speak at conferences, write books, and advocate for an African American presence in literature and the media.
"Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the Blacks are always the Chicago Cubs."
- Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed in an interview recorded on May 1, 1974. Courtesy of the Brockport Writers Forum.
Image courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.
John Yau (1950-Present) is one of the most prominent New York School Asian-American poets. Unlike many of the others, however, Yau’s publications started in the early 1980s and continue to the present day. He was born in 1950 in America, and his parents were Chinese. He considers himself at a crossroads between being American and Chinese, especially since his father was born in New York. Because of his dual identity, Yau writes occasionally about not fitting in with either group, white or Chinese. John Yau currently lives in New York, and was heavily influenced by the New York School, even learning under John Ashberry. He is a poet as well as an art critic, currently working for the online radical art forum Hyperallergic as a weekend editor.
“[America] seldom recognizes that it’s more than two colors. How do I gain agency in that situation?”
- John Yau
Jayne Cortez (1934-2012) is a female African-American poet associated with both the New York School and the Black Arts Movement. Similar to other New York School poets, Cortez experiments with blending artistic mediums; she is known for reading her poetry alongside avant-garde music. Although Cortez took influence from the artistic vibrancy of the New York School, the meaning and thematic elements of her poetry are more reflective of the Black Arts Movement. Cortez focuses especially on police brutality against African-Americans, the Black Power Movement, and the plight of being a women of color during the 60s and 70s.
"In the sense that I also try to reflect the fullness of the Black experience, I’m very much a jazz poet."
-Jayne Cortez
Jayne Cortez performing in New York in 1994. Courtesy of David Corio.
Courtesy of the Danowski Poetry Collection at Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.
Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) was a Panamanian poet belonging to the New York School and Umbra Poets. He relocated to the Bronx at a young age and was raised in a household of activists which likely inspired the subject of his work. Thomas identified with African American and African culture. Often addressing the civil rights movement and Vietnam, his poetry reveals his familiarity with Black music, surrealism, contemporary American popular culture, and cinema, as well as empathy for the underprivileged. Thomas’s poems retain the nonchalance associated with the New York School, but they can just as easily become hard and sharp when he writes of the hardships faced by past African Americans.
“What may sound like outrage is a way at getting at the truth of the situation that exists today in the social senses.”
- Lorenzo Thomas
Header image taken by Everett Collection Art titled: Colored Waiting Room Sign. Courtesy of Fine Art America.