A History of African American Poetry

Lauri Ramey is Xiaoxiang Scholars Program Distinguished Professor at Hunan Normal University. Her previous publications include Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry (2008), The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, 1962-1975 (2008), Black British Writing (with R. Victoria Arana, 2004), and a two-volume anthology set (with Aldon Lynn Nielsen) Every Goodbye Ain't Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans (2006) and What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America (2015).

• 1. Introduction to a genre; 2. The origins of African American poetry; 3. Emancipation to modernism; 4. The twentieth-century Renaissances; 5. Contemporary African American poetry.

'In this compact survey, Ramey (English, Hunan Normal Univ., China) corrals her lifelong learning into a useful history of African American poetry, and she offers compelling reasons for considering works and poets previously disregarded and for reconsidering many who were misunderstood … This book keeps discourse current and research up to date in light of past cultural and racist exigencies … Highly Recommended.' L. L. Johnson, Choice