Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-217) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Don't call it a comeback : the rhetorical successes of the Black Arts Movement -- "Art for all our sake" : frameworks for assessing Black Arts writers' rhetorical legacies -- "Our distaste for the enemy, our love for each other" : the radical rhetoric of blame and praise in Black Arts Movement poetry -- "A tradition of beautiful talk" : the Black Arts poet-rhetor and the Black is Beautiful Movement -- "Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps" : toasts, hip-hop, and the Black Pride Movement -- "Woman power / Is / Black Power / Is / Human Power" : resistance rhetoric of Black Arts women poets -- Coda: "A language that we been speaking" : twenty-first-century echoes of the Black Arts Movement.
Summary:
"In Revolutionary Poetics, Sarah RudeWalker details the specific ways that the Black Arts Movement achieved its revolutionary goals through rhetorical poetics-in what forms, to what audiences, and to what effect. BAM has had far-reaching influence, particularly in developments in positive conceptions of Blackness, in the valorization of language and its subsequent effects on educational policy, in establishing a legacy of populist dissemination of African American vernacular culture, and in setting the groundwork for important considerations of the aesthetic intersections of race with gender and sexuality. These legacies stand as the movement's primary-and largely unacknowledged-successes, and they provide significant lessons for navigating our current political moment. RudeWalker presents rhetorical readings of the work of BAM poets (including, among others, Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Burroughs, Jayne Cortez, Sarah Fabio, Nikki Giovanni, Ted Joans, Maulana Karenga, Etheridge Knight, Haki Madhubuti, Clarence Major, Larry Neal, Carolyn Rodgers, and Sonia Sanchez) in order to demonstrate the various strands of rhetorical influence the Black Arts project and the significant legacies these writers left behind. Her investigation of the rhetorical contributions of these writers allows her to deal realistically with the movement's problematic aspects, while still devoting thoughtful scholarly attention to the successful legacy of BAM writers and the ways their work can continue to shape contemporary rhetorical activism"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.