This exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora throughout the twentieth century begins with the premise that the catalyst for political engagement has rarely been misery, poverty, or oppression. People are drawn to social movement because of hope: their dreams of a new world radically different from the one they inherited.
Our imagination may be the most revolutionary tool available to us, and yet we have failed to understand its political importance and recognize it as a powerful social force.
From Paul Robeson to Aime Cesaire to Jayne Cortez, Kelley unearths freedom dreams in African and Third World liberation movements, in the hope that Communism offered, in the imaginative mindscapes of Surrealism, in the transformative potential of radical feminism, and in the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.
With Freedom Dreams, Kelley affirms his place as "a major new voice on the intellectual left" (Frances Fox Piven) and shows us that any serious movement toward freedom must begin in the mind.
Kelley's comparative obscurity is to our detriment, because he favors thorough research and historical detail over glib sloganeering -- Washington Post, July 23, 2002
Kelley's elegant polemic promises to inspire "a few more dreamers to 'do' and a few more skeptics to dream." -- Book Review, July 23, 2002
Robin D. G. Kelley never met Thelonious Monk, but he grew up with his music. Born in 1962, he spent his formative years in Harlem in a household and a city saturated with modern jazz. As a child he took a few trumpet lessons with the legendary Jimmy Owens, played French horn in junior high school, and picked up piano during his teen years in California. In 1987, Kelley earned his PhD in History from UCLA and focused his work on social movements, politics and culture--although music remained his passion.
During his tenure on the faculties of Emory University, the University of Michigan, New York University, and Columbia University, Kelley's scholarly interests shifted increasingly toward music. He has written widely on jazz, hip hop, electronic music, musicians' unions and technological displacement, and social and political movements more broadly.
Before becoming Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Robin D. G. Kelley served on the faculty at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies, where he held the first Louis Armstrong Chair in Jazz Studies. Besides Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Kelley has authored several prize-winning books, including Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (The Free Press, 1994); Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of 1998 by the Village Voice. He is currently completing Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2011), and a general survey of African American history co-authored with Tera Hunter and Earl Lewis to be published by Norton.
Kelley's essays have appeared in several anthologies and journals, including The Nation, Monthly Review, The Voice Literary Supplement, New York Times (Arts and Leisure), New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Color Lines, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, Lenox Avenue, African Studies Review, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, One World, Social Text, Metropolis, American Visions, Boston Review, Fashion Theory, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, New Labor Forum, Souls, Metropolis, and frieze: contemporary art and culture, to name a few.
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsAn inspiring vision for radical struggles, July 22, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Hardcover)
While Robin Kelley might claim this book is not a "true" intellectual history, there's an awful lot of intellect packed inside. His profound thoughts, engaging writing, and motivating ideas all find focus with his idea that the center of any movement for change has to be love -- love of self, love of people, love of place. Jammed with interesting historical notes and biographies, his sweeping perspective on what it has meant to be black and, perhaps more importantly, identified as such, would serve every citizen of the world well. And if Mayor Mike B. and his constitutents would read Kelley's idea for downtown NYC, New York -- and the world -- might have a chance.
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This review is from: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Hardcover)
This is the BEST book I've read in the last 20 years!! A must read for anyone interested in the Utopian vision of radical movements. I learned a great deal about the reparations movement, Black feminism, and a movement no one is talking about-Surrealism. And it's beautifully written.
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This book is beyond excellent. It covers the topics that are not usually covered in regards to the political activity and productions of African Americans. GREAT READ! For those not as radical as I it may be a challenge, however, that makes it all the more important for you to dive into!
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