“Once again, with Brick City Vanguard, James Smethurst proves that he is one of the leading scholars of the Black Arts Movement, of New Left literary studies, and of one of its emblematic writers, Amiri Baraka.”- Jean-Philippe Marcoux, cofounder of the Amiri Baraka Society and author of Jazz Griots: Music as History in the 1960s African American Poem;“James Smethurst has read everything on Baraka and produced an original and important book. Brick City Vanguard is a major contribution to the field.”- William J. Harris, author of The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic;“An illuminating work about a central figure in the Black Arts Movement.”- CHOICE.