African-American History

Baraka: I’ll tell you about that book. Do y'all know Aime Cesaire’s work? If you don’t, you should. That’s the first dictum of writing: to read. For African people hooked up around the world, we have the treasure chest that is boundless, boundless! You should never be bored in your life--of literature I’m talking about, whether you talk about Afro-American literature. That’s what amazing about these folks, these filmmakers, I’m talking about Negroes, they can make all of this garbage, yet the treasure chest lies untouched. You got all of the slave writings for instance, Fred Douglas, Linda Brett, Henry Bibb. Incredible slave narratives, more exciting than anything you see in the movies. Nothing is more exciting or more beautifully written than Fred Douglas, there is no American speech at any higher level than Fred Douglas.

Anybody who tells you different is crazy. There is no higher level, not no Melville, nobody. You want to know about American language go to Fred Douglas. Tell me somebody can match that, anywhere, anytime. I go to Willie Shakespeare in English, you have to reference that. You need footnotes for that. Read Fred, you don’t need no footnotes. That’s talking about right this minute. "Would you have me argue the profundity of the human soul? Is that a topic for Republicans." He says, "there is no one who does not understand that slavery is wrong for them." That statement there, what can you do with that? Unassailable logic. In English there is no literature at no higher level than Fred Douglas. Not Shakespeare, not, not, not, not. Not the Bible.

Fred takes the Bible, he takes Shakespeare, when you read Fred’s writing, he already copped the Bible, and he copped Shakespeare, and then he put the Black thing in there just to make it sweet. Read that.

How do you practice? You first have to read. You first have to read. You have to read everything. I can say that now, but then again, when I was a kid, when I was in the Air Force, I used to read everything because I didn’t have nothing else to do. I was locked up in the Air Force, I would read for twelve or fourteen hours a day. I mean terrible stuff, Thomas Hardy. Stuff I would never wish on nobody. You know what I mean.

ya Salaam: But do you think that helped you?

Baraka:  Yes, it did. Why? Because all of those things were confirmations. My mama and daddy already had told me, y'all the smartest colored people on the planet or we going to make you that. You see, but I wasn’t sure, because I always thought that White people, because they had that enormous public relations outfit saying how hip they is--at seventeen and eighteen I was trying to figure it out. I said, well, let me check them out, they might know something, you know? I wanted to know something, so I checked them out. I was the night librarian at Randy Air Force base and I ran the library. This White woman who ran it found out that I knew the books and loved the books, so she went on a vacation. She went down to the beach and just stayed there and said, you got it. So, I would have my boys in there every night and we educated ourselves in the history of so-called western, i.e. European, culture. That’s what we did, every night. Whether it was Palastrina or Bach, the madrigals, we would sit there and listen to it, and then we would read all that stuff. Tess De’verviel, Thomas Hardy, all of that, Jude the Obscure.

Why? Because we thought it might have something of value in it. So we read through it. We would read all of the New York Times Book Review stuff. To say what at the end? There was limited information in it. Although I can not regret any of it, a lot of that time I could have spent trying to get through them ten thousand magazine articles DuBois has written. I could have spent my time trying to get through all of DuBois’ works and all of Langston’s work.

Just that. You know that DuBois actually wrote ten thousand articles that he published. Now figure that out. How could he write ten thousand magazine articles? Well, first you have to live to be ninety-five. Then you have to write maybe ten articles a month, that’s a hundred a twenty a year, no, that ain’t enough. How many you have to write? About two hundred a year for fifty years.

Did I answer the question?

ya Salaam: No, you were talking about how you prepared to write A System of Dante’s Hell.

Baraka:  Oh, yeah, and I asked had anyone read Cesaire, and no one answered? Read Aime Cesaire. His great work is called Notes On A Return To My Native Land. He was one of the founders with Senghor and Damas from Guyana of Negritude, that was the Black consciousness movement that comes out of the thirties and the forties from French speaking peoples. They had a movement in Haiti called Indigismo, it’s the same movement. They had a movement in the Spanish speaking Black countries called Negrismo, same movement. Blackism, Black consciousness. Throughout the West Indies, and through out the world.

The reason I say Ceasaire is because when he was a student over at the Sorbonne in Paris, he, Damas and Senghor were writing what they described as French Symbolist imitations. They were imitating the French Symbolists. So one day he got disgusted with this and said, I’ll never write another poem. I’ll only write prose. Well, he lied because the prose that he wrote was Notes On A Return. What does that have to do with Dante, well the Dante is the same thing. I was under the influence of a lot of writers in the Village.

I said to myself, I’m not going to do this anymore. Why? Because you’ll find out when you imitate people’s writings, you also imitate their point of view. I wrote a long paper on something called the "content of form." Forms are a form of content. You understand what I’m saying? When Claude McKay, for instance, chooses the English sonnet form, that’s an aspect of his content.

His focus on that English form, tells you something about his philosophy. I began to see that even being influenced by these people, I was being influenced by their content which I didn’t believe in. When I was among the White writers we used to argue all the time about politics not having anything to do with art, that’s what they would tell me and I would say, for whatever reason, say, but it does. Even down there among the beatniks, I would say that it does. Why? Because if you were describing an apple that’s your description of it. You are trying to convince me that that apple is an apple for me as it is for you. What’s the difference between that propaganda and me telling you capitalism ain’t no good. Finally, one might have more implications than the other. So anyway, I said, I have to stop being influenced by these people’s form because the form is also making me think some of the things that they think. So, I said I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m not going to try and write poetry anymore. I didn’t know Cesaire had said that till maybe fifteen or twenty years later. So, I said, what will I do? I’m going to write a story in which I do not the story, but write the story that the story makes me think of. And that’s what I tried to do. In other words, I was telling myself a story in my head, and I said, I’m not going to write that story that I’m telling myself in my head. I’m going to write the story that that story makes me think of. You know what I’m saying?

ya Salaam: No. Break that [s---] down.

Baraka: In other words if I say, I walked into this room and saw a group of writers sitting around a table with books on table. That’s the story, but that ain’t what I think. That’s the story, but what that story makes me think of is something else. I called them association complexes. I would be thinking of something, but I wouldn’t write about what I was thinking, I would write about what thinking about that made me think because there are associations. Because I would say, well, I know the story but I don’t know what the story would make me think. In other words, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Now, what does that make you think about? That’s the story, but what does that make you think about? Well, I remember Jack when he was downtown last week, he had this funny looking hat on, so forth and so on. Then I saw Jill the other day coming out of this bar. It all had to do with what those associations were more than anything else. I think poets do that a lot and they don’t know it, or they do know it.

Also, you’d be surprised if you let your mind run as free as it will, it ain’t gon run that free, cause you going to stop it. (Laugher.) Naw, that’s right, cause you’ll think you’re not making sense. But you’ll be surprised, you’ll be making sense that you don’t know is sense. It’s true. You’ll say something, it’ll come out your mouth--you know you mouth is fast--and then two or three beats later you will say, oh, that’s what that means. You’ve got to trust yourself. It’s just like anything else, like sports, like them basketball players. You’ve got to trust yourself. Michael Jordan says when he goes up in the air, he don’t know what he’s going to do. He goes up there and creates, that’s what you have to do. You have to create. Now, if you’re crazy, we’ll find out. If you can’t make it, we’ll find out. But, you’ve got to go for it.

This might sound peculiar to you, but there’s a lot of stuff in your own life you don’t even know. You don’t know nothing about yourself. You want to know about the world, check out yourself. What was your grandmother talking about the last time you saw her? What did she mean? Where did she come from? What her boyfriend look like? How did your grandmother get to the place where you met her. There’s stuff in your life that’s incredible. All kinds of things. I don’t know what they are, you don’t know what they are, but you can find out. If you was to turn detective like Easy Rawlins and try to go down your own life, who are you parents, how did they meet, where they always your sweet parents, who were their parents, where did they live? There’s a lot of secretes, even when you live with somebody, when you married to somebody, you don’t know everything about the person you’re living with. My wife and I been together 31 years, now that’s a long time to be with anybody, but that don’t mean you know everything about them. Cause every once in a while you be talking and you said "what??? I never knew that? I never knew you believed that? Life is very, very complex and it changes all the time. What you want to be today, you might not want to be tomorrow. What you called yourself a few minutes ago, you might not want to call yourself the next time I see you coming around the corner. I don’t mean you’re all like Rodman--Rodman changes his hairstyle, he got purple today, tomorrow he might have yellow--I just mean your mind is subject to all kinds of things.

ya Salaam: What did you do in terms of craft. I want you to speak about craft. How would you practice writing?

Baraka:  How would you practice writing? Read and write. Read and write. Write what? Whatever comes into your head. Whatever. But also have projects. Things that you want to do. I have projects lined up into 27A.D. that I want to do. A lot of which are done but not done. The reason projects are important is because that’s something you can apply yourself to. How do you do it? You have to do it. You have to write and correct it. You have to write and look at it. I’m not a big one for rewriting. I’m not a big rewrite fan. My rewrite is choome, into the trash can. I don’t mess with it. If it looks like it’s not going to hang out, I’ll throw it away. I’m not going to torture it. Why? That’s arrogance. Like Bill Cosby’s says, I’ll kill you and make another one just like you. I’ll kill you poem and make another one just like you. Don’t have that fear of it. You’ve got to be free and open to write about anything from any point of view that appeals to you but you have to actually study, do that mental gymnastics. You can’t write on an empty brain. Some people does.

What do you have to study? The world! What a silly thing to be in the world and not know anything about it. I mean how silly is that to be here everyday and not know nothing about the world, to be walking around just ignorant. That’s a hell of a thing. I’m ashamed of my own ignorance, you know what I mean?--not in anyway that would make me less arrogant--but ashamed of it in the sense of there is a lot that you gots to know that you will never know. When I get to something, you know, find out something and then think about how many years I been walking around thinking that I knew something and didn’t really know it, didn’t know nothing about it. Like I was somewhere today and I opened up a book and started reading about the Boer War. Now, I know about the Boer War. I read Conan Doyle’s little jive thing--you know Sherlock Holmes’ man--Doyle wrote a thing about the Boer War so I read it.

Why? Cause I wanted to know about the Boer War, but then, I’m reading some more on it and I say, I didn’t know that. I started saying, hey, I better go back and look at the Boer War again. But then you say, why you want to know about the Boer War Baraka that’s some old corny stuff. Because I want to know about it, that’s why. I want to know. It was in South Africa. They were fighting over our land. Why would the Boers and the English fight? What was that about. What were the stakes in that. Who sold out? What niggahs sold out, I know there must have been some who sold out. That’s true. When you look at the Civil War or the destruction of Reconstruction, you start thinking it was all White people, that’s a game. Just like today, if somebody was to tell you, aw, they’re getting rid of Affirmative Action and this and that, and forty years from now, you say it was White people this and White people that. Hey, list all the niggahs that was in it. Who helped them do that. Same way during the Civil War. Yes, they did. Some of the same people we be calling out as the first Negro so and so, look at who they were and why they was that.

ya Salaam: When you wrote, you wrote on a typewriter?

Baraka:  Always.

ya Salaam: Manual or electric?

Baraka:  Well, it was manual until, let’s see, a while back I started writing on an electric typewriter. I’ve had a computer maybe since ninety-something.  But always with a typewriter. I didn’t never like to write longhand.

ya Salaam: Why?

Baraka:  My hand hurt. (Laughter.) I could write faster on a typewriter. I was the only boy in typing class in high school. I got a C, but I can type. I’m always grateful for that stroke of revelation that made me take typing. I wasn’t thinking about it for no special reason, but then again, I guess I was thinking about writing because I had been to a writing class. So I learned to type and I am forever grateful for that. I think typing, computing, that’s the way you have to do it. That longhand, I’m not with that. I do it a lot because I don’t have any choice, traveling all the time, I’ve written a lot of stuff in longhand but I can’t do nothing with it because once I write it out like that I’m disgusted that I had to do that in the first place because that’s just a lot of work.

ya Salaam: And then you would have to do it again, type it over, because no one can read your writing?

Baraka:  (Shakes his head yes and smiles. Laugher.) I don’t know why that is. I know my wife says she can’t read it, and, I don’t know, I think she would be suspicious if someone else could, but I know I can’t read it and she can’t read it. It takes a long time for me to read my own handwriting. I don’t know why even bother.

ya Salaam: Were you one of those people who had a writing routine or did you write anytime, the morning, at night, or whatever?

Baraka:  When I was younger I used to like to write late at night and early in the morning. Now I write late at night.

ya Salaam: What’s that about?

Baraka:  Quiet. The rap concerts go off in the house. The little twenty-five year old children stop running up and down the steps. That don’t slow down until about two. About three or four is the best time, four until light is the best time.

ya Salaam: If you were absconded as you walked out of the door and they said, tomorrow we do the operation and this operation is going to wipe out all of your books except two and you can tell us what two that would remain--it’s sort of a Sophie’s choice kind of question --what two books would you want to have left behind?

Baraka:  The ones I’ve still got to write. (Laugher.) I really feel that way. I don’t have no worshipful relationship to my work in that way. I did it. That’s it. It ain’t me, that’s just some books on the shelf, because if you don’t act like that, then that will be you over there on the shelf. You’ve met people who don’t go any further than that. That’s where they at. What they said in 1928, that’s what they say today. Why? Because they worship that fact that hey, I have a book and I said this. A lot of stuff that I have in books, I don’t even agree with that anymore. Somebody’ll say, well, you have it in a book. Yeah, but that book ain’t me. That book was written in 19--, I was a little boy then, I don’t believe that anymore. That’s like Skip [Gates] and them be talking about DuBois and the talented tenth. Hey man, that was 1890-something he wrote that. For you to keep running that back to a guy who joined the communist party when he was 93 years old, that’s kind of far out. Why do they do it? For obvious reasons. They cannot deal with all of DuBois, so they make believe his life stopped there. The White people do that to me all the time with the downtown stuff, let’s make believe his work stopped there. You can’t allow yourself to be linked to the work as if it were you. You can defend it or cop out about it, but I’m not going to pretend it’s me because that’s death. You become a bookend, a literary figure that’s somebody’s going to bury. That’s what I loved about Jimmy [Baldwin] finally, when we made our rapprochement. He was a good brother. That was somebody you could hang out with. He didn’t think of himself up on a bookshelf and he would burn you in a minute if that’s what you wanted to approach him with.

Jimmy had a terrible mouth for those of you that don’t get that inference out of his books, he had the sting of a cobra out of his mouth. He would hurt you. He never took that idea of being "the author" seriously. Now, a thinker, that’s different. He didn’t want you to take him light on the thought side. If you would try to play him cheap in terms of what he thought, then you were in for trouble, but the book thing. You see to be stuck like Ellison on one book and to be there polishing the weapon, polishing the gun so much till you don’t get another shot. That’s what that is. You be there polishing the gun so much till the gangster done went away. And you’re sitting there, well, I’m trying to get it so it’s like this. The thing is to bam, pull it out and shoot it. For me that’s what writing is, you got to pull it out and shoot it. What is in your mind, what is in your feelings, go for it. Nobody’s feelings are more profound than yours. Nobody knows more than you if you know what they are talking about.

ya Salaam: What do you mean by that?

Baraka:  If you know what they are talking about--if they go off in some jargon or linguistic code, that’s different, but if they are talking about the world and you know what they’re talking about, they don’t know no more than you do. They might have more experience which you are then suppose to respect, but there is no such thing as they have an exclusive hold on meaning.

Djali Dialogue with Amiri Baraka - Part I

Djali Dialogue with Amiri Baraka - Part III