Amiri Baraka (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

Born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, in 1934, Imamu Amiri Baraka was raised in the urban middle-class environment against which he has since rebelled. His father, Coyette (Coyt) LeRoi, was a postal employee, and his mother, Anna Lois Russ Jones, a social worker. Educated in the Newark public schools, Baraka began cartooning in junior high school and writing science fiction for the school publication in high school before graduating at the age of sixteen.

Although he had once considered the ministry as a career, Baraka accepted a science scholarship...

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