Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic
by Larry Neal
David Zwirner Books, 2024[Publication date: March 12, 2024]
A comprehensive and inspiring collection of essays by Larry Neal, a founder of the seminal Black Arts Movement
“The
Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist
that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and
spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an
art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America.”
—Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968
Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the
Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the
arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in
Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was
politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for
the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in
his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical
canon and charged Black artists and writers with reshaping artistic
traditions according to their own history. As he proclaimed in his essay
“The Black Writer’s Role,” written in 1966, “Black writers must listen
to the world with their whole selves––their entire bodies. Must make
literature move people. Must want to make our people feel, the way our
music makes them feel.”
The writer Allie Biswas, who selected
the texts Neal wrote from 1964 to 1978 included here, introduces the
volume, illuminating the rich and varied context in which he produced
his work.
REVIEW:
“Neal
wrote extensively about the chasm between art and the Black experience,
inviting artists to produce politically charged works that are anchored
in Black history and oriented toward the Black community” ― Widewalls
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cultural
critic and playwright Larry Neal (1937–1981) was a leading member of
the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Atlanta
and grew up in Philadelphia, earning a BA in English and history from
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He also studied folklore as a
graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, after which he
served as the arts editor for Liberator, where he published many of his
essays about art. His collections of poetry, Black Boogaloo: Notes on a Black Literature (1969) and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971), show the influence of vernacular speech and folklore.
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Allie Biswas is a writer and editor based in London. In 2021, she coedited The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960–1980,
a compendium of rarely seen historical texts that address the role of
art during the civil rights movement. She has published interviews with
artists including Theaster Gates, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Meleko
Mokgosi, Zanele Muholi, Adam Pendleton, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Her
essays have appeared in books on Serge Alain Nitegeka, Reginald
Sylvester II and Woody De Othello, amongst other artists. Most recently,
she has contributed texts to Portia Zvavahera (David Zwirner Books, 2023), Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, and Frank Bowling: Sculpture. She is currently editing a monograph about the artist Hew Locke.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/larry-neal
Cultural critic and playwright Larry Neal was a leading member of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He was born in Atlanta in 1937 and grew up in Philadelphia, earning a BA in English and history from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He also studied folklore as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. His collections of poetry, Black Boogaloo: Notes on a Black Literature (1969) and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971), show the influence of vernacular speech and folklore.
Politically active and involved in the arts, Neal wrote essays about the Black Arts Movement and served as arts editor for the journal Liberator. With Amiri Baraka, he edited the anthology Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968). Neal was education director of the Black Panther Party, was a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement, and belonged to the Black Arts Theatre. In 1970, he was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship for African American critical studies.
Neal held teaching positions at the City College of New York, Yale University, and Wesleyan University. In the 1970s, he was executive director of the Commission on the Arts and Humanities in Washington, DC. Neal’s work is available in Vision of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (1989), a compilation of his essays, poetry, and drama. He died in 1981.
Illiberal America: A History
by Steven Hahn
W. W. Norton & Company, 2024
[Publication date: March 19, 2024]
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again: in Illiberal America,
a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as
deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals.A
storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years,
unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January
6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led
many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again,
for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has
deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced
in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows
that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally
deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides
individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived
threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status,
or ideology.
Driven by popular movements and
implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the
American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely
connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic
institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and
immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s
fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and
abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new
constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions
in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive
movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers
of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the
1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build
support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968.
Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns,
education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history,
and how that history bears on the present crisis.
8 pages of illustrations
REVIEWS:
"[Hahn’s]
book makes an important case for vigilance in the face of extremism and
warns against telling the history of the United States as one of
inevitable progress."
--David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review
"Hahn’s
endeavor, undertaken with remarkable subtlety, breadth of historical
detail and electrifying prose, is not so much to critique the failings
of liberalism, as many historians (and activists) have profitably done,
but to displace and diminish liberalism’s despotic status in our
historical imagination."
― Sam Adler-Bell, Washington Post
"Hahn’s
achievement is connecting this sort of dimly remembered revanchism to
more infamous episodes―Jim Crow, McCarthyism, South Boston’s violent
revolt against school integration―and revealing a larger and more
influential illiberalism than our popular history has allowed."
― David Scharfenberg, Boston Globe
"Steven Hahn has written the definitive
history of the illiberalism that informs our 'troubles.' Read this book
carefully. Understand what we are up against and find the resources in
our traditions to fight for the America we want. An indispensable book
for these dark days!"
― Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again
"An
instant classic.… Steven Hahn transforms our understanding of the
multiple traditions embedded in the American past, including a deeply
rooted disdain for the ideals of democracy and equality. If you want to
understand the historical origins of our present condition, this is the
place to start."
― Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding
"Steven
Hahn takes full measure of this nation’s entrenched histories of
exclusion, inequality, and violence. This is an outstanding book,
essential for understanding our own moment."
― Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done
"In
a tour de force, Steven Hahn makes a very powerful argument that
illiberalism―and not conservatism, much less fascism―is the best way to
think of this country’s long history of opposition to political
equality. In the glut of books hoping to make sense of the current
crisis, Hahn’s Illiberal America stands out as the most nuanced, elegant, and convincing."
― Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth
"Brilliant
and timely.… Steven Hahn reveals the pervasive entanglement of liberal
visions and illiberal restraints throughout American history. No recent
invention or fundamental heresy, illiberalism has been as American as
cherry pie."
― Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars
"Steven Hahn’s Illiberal America
is a brilliantly conceived reframing of our national past and how it
has shaped the present. Hahn’s prodigious research and insightful
analysis illustrate how illiberalism has always been a powerful,
sometimes even central, feature of American society. In so doing, he
allows us to imagine a history beyond American exceptionalism. Essential
reading."
―Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield
"Clear-eyed and beautifully written…a remarkable reinterpretation of the country’s past."
― Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City
"Steven
Hahn persuasively dismantles the idea that the recent and terrifying
threats to liberal democracy represent an alarming departure from the
American tradition. Instead, this revelatory book reminds us, such
threats have been a constant, recurring theme―and knowing that should
make us more optimistic that we can overcome them once again."
― Nicholas Lemann, author of Transaction Man
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. He teaches at New York University and lives in New York City and Southold, on Long Island.
