A pungent and lyrical portrait of mid-'60s black protest."-- Kirkus Reviews With a new introduction by Woodie King Jr.This 1965 novel is a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, structured on the themes of Dante's Inferno: violence, incontinence, fraud, treachery. With a poet's skill Baraka creates the atmosphere of hell, and with dramatic power he reconstructs the brutality of the black slums of Newark, a small Southern town, and New York City. The episodes contained within the novel represent both states of mind and states of the soul--lyrical, fragmentary, and allusive.

    Naked Pueblo, his absolutely maximalist, throw-everything-in-and-shake-it-up short story collection, buzzes like some kind of whacked-out fever dream." (Esquire)

    Seuss and J. K. Rowling. In analysing these and many other authors, Alison Lurie shows how these gifted writers have used children's literature to transfigure sorrow, nostalgia and the struggles of their own experience.

    M. Wheelock, this book is well suited for use in any introductory course.