The Black Aesthetic

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1972. First paperback edition. Softcover. Very good condition. Octavo. xxiv, 409 (2)pp. Original black stiff wraps with white, yellow,red and green lettering on cover and spine. Collection of essays on black aesthetics including contributions of thirty-three writers, including Langston Hughes "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," on theory, music, poetry, drama and fiction, edited by literary critic Addison Gayle, Jr. The book "... is up to its eyelids in some of the best writing there is on some of the most explosive ideas black people have had since water." (Toni Morrison). And "A volume of strident advocacy, it is also mocking, provoking and accusing, and light years away from the plane of conventional literary discourse. But what is at stake is not a fine point or structure but a matter of artistic survival... The sense of engagement, of passionate caring runs like fire through the book..." (Thomas Lask, New York Times). W.E.B. DuBois' "Of The Sorrow Songs" includes lyrics and scores of "Negro Songs." Biographies and index at rear. Half-title with full page sensible inscription on black manhood to unnamed recipient, signed by Cliff. Wraps with light wear along edges.