Baraka's The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones was originally published in a severely edited form in 1984. The 1997 edition restores the cuts made by the publisher and tells the story of the black literary leader and political activist through his fortieth birthday in 1974.

Baraka won the Obie Award in 1964 for his play Dutchman, which relates the violence and hatred that ensues when a white woman picks up a black man on the subway in New York City. It was originally published in 1964 with another one of his plays in the book Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays.

The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1991), edited by William J. Harris, is a good introduction to the wide variety of works authored by Baraka between 1957 and 1990. The volume includes poetry, plays, social essays, novel excerpts, and music criticism.

Poet Allen Ginsberg was a leader of...