The contributions to "Critical Voices of Black Liberation in the Americas" originated from the 1999 CAAR Conference in Munster and from conferences held in the US in 2000 and 2001. More than half of the eleven essays consider black performances on stage, in sound, and on film; the remaining essays explore slavery, African American literature, and nineteenth-century black educators. These exciting essays creatively examine artistic and/or political articulation of black liberation as the construction of a new critical and signifyin(g) voice. This liberated and critical voice asserts itself as much as a communal expression of black subjectivities as it is an articulation of the black self.

Teachers of English literature, music and multicultural studies will find this to be an invaluable source for supplementary reading and writing lessons on personal narrative, history, drama and poetry. Diverse methods of inspiring students to write through readings of African American literaturefrom all over the Americasinclude exercises using the poetry of Nobel laureate Derek Wolcott, Aime Csare, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Rita Dove, Bob Kaufman, Nikki Giovanni, and Langston Hughes. Exercises stressing the musical influence on jazz and blues poetry, and the resultant use of lyric poetic devices, also fortify this collection. Included are student samples, a select bibliography, and a brief discography.