Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka, one of America's most important — and controversial — literary figures, died on Thursday from complications after surgery following a long illness, according to his oldest son. Baraka was 79.

Questlove reflects on Amiri Baraka:
I’m not the right age for Amiri Baraka, not exactly. Or rather: I’m not the right age to have seen his changes as they happened. Mr. Baraka, who died last week at 79, passed through so many different phases, from middle-class kid in Newark to aspiring Beat poet to founder of the Black Arts movement to leftist activist to academic. For me, he arrived as an author looking back, already armed with his own self-reflection: He published his memoir, “The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones,” in 1984, when I was in high school, though the book didn’t make its way into my hands or my brain until a few years after that.

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