'I was listening to Amiri Baraka on radio one morning. Vicki Viidikas introduced me to Baraka’s work years ago. At that time he was known as LeRoi Jones and his Tales in a Grove Press Black Cat paperback were an amazing breakthrough of fictional possibility. The movie Dutchman was a brilliant tour de force. Originally associated with the Beats, he later took up an Afro-American position and changed his name. Later still, after seeing the limitations of nationalist and race politics, he moved on to become one of the very few truly progressive, radical writers in the USA.'
(Introduction)