Overview

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, prominent figures in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) converted to Islam and took new names. Poets such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Muhammad Touré, and Marvin X incorporated Islamic words and expressions, references to the Qur'an, and Arabic script, as well as symbols like the crescent star and depictions of Islamic architecture and clothing. They connected places like Harlem, Chicago, Newark, and Oakland to locales in the Muslim world such as Timbuktu, Songhai, and Mecca. These artists also played a pivotal role in developing Black studies and creating alternatives to the Eurocentrism of the American educational system. Ellen McLarney explores how BAM writers identified with Islam as integral to the African American cultural, spiritual, and intellectual heritage. Examining poetry, visual art, music, drama, and mixed-media collaborations, she traces the emergence of a new kind of Islamic art rooted in the African American experience. Their works protested scientific racism, police brutality, colonial domination, and economic oppression while resurrecting a suppressed Islamic past and sharing spiritual visions of a new kind of future. Based on interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and close analysis of key works, this book reveals how BAM redefined Black art, Islamic poetics, and Black Muslim aesthetics in the struggle for racial justice.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ellen McLarney
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231219419

ISBN 10:   0231219415
Pages:   376
Publication Date:   31 March 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Awaiting stock  

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments The Opening Prelude. الاطلال (al-Atlal): Poetic Traces of the Past 1. “Constant Conscious Striving”: Jihad of the Pen and the Black Arts Movement Part I: Anticipating the BAM 2. Nation in a Nation in a Nation: The Islamic Counterpublic and the Black Arts 3. Science’s Fictions: Yakub and the Black Arts Part II: Malcolm X and Black Art 4. Music in the Message: Malcolm X’s Gospel Truth 5. “Flame Feeding Flame”: The Literary Malcolm X Part III: Black Study and Black Life 6. “Fly to Allah”: Marvin X’s Fugitive Life and Black Study 7. The Barakas in New Ark: The Homeplace of Black Art 8. “blk/visions for blk/lives”: Sonia Sanchez’s Rebirth in Islam Coda. 360° of Islamic Audiovisualities: Revolution and Evolution Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

In Black Arts, Black Muslims, Ellen McLarney uniquely and adeptly places multiple versions and interpretations of Islam, and self-identified Muslims, at the core of the Black Arts Movement and related movements. All future scholarship on not just the Black Arts Movement, but also on Black Studies and Black Power, will have to contend with Black Arts, Black Muslims. -- Michael O. West, coeditor of <i>From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International SInce the Age of Revolution</i>

Author Information

Ellen McLarney is associate professor of Middle East, Arabic, and African and African American studies at Duke University. She led a project on Muslim American poets and musicians of African descent with the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art as well as an initiative on Islam and racial justice in the American South. She has also published in Souls, The Black Scholar, and Black Perspectives.

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