Including6 Persons, a previously unpublished novel; The System of Dante's Hell; and Tales, this collection also features four uncollected short stories.

Poet, dramatist, essayist, fiction writer and political activist, Amiri Baraka is considered by many to be the most influential and preeminent African-American literary figures of our time. Transbluesency reveals a writer shaping a body of poetry that is as well a body of knowledge--a passionate reflection upon the cultural, political, and aesthetic questions of his time.

For almost half a century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the most important commentators on African American music and culture. In this brilliant assemblage of his writings on music, the first such collection in nearly twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography, history, musical analysis, and political commentary to recall the sounds, people, times, and places he's encountered. As in his earlier classics, Blues People and Black Music, Baraka offers essays on the famous—Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane—and on those whose names are known mainly by jazz aficionados—Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style, with its deep roots in poetry, makes palpable his love and respect for his jazz musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm show us again how much Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers mattered. He brings home to us how music itself matters, and how musicians carry and extend that knowledge from generation to generation, providing us, their listeners, with a sense of meaning and belonging.

This book contains essays on race relations in America since 1965.

"There are mostly portraits here. Portraits of life. Of life being lived. Black People inspire us. Send life into us ... We wanted to conjure with Black Life to recreate it for our selves. So that the connection with you would be a bigger Self"--From unnumbered page 13.

The complete autobiography of a literary legend.