New Books from Lauri Ramey

well, not that new -- These books were released last season, but I wasn't able to make a decent scan of the covers before I left for California, so am finally putting them up in this space today.

There's no other way to say it, these are two indispensible volumes.  Ramey's RESEARCH COMPENDIUM on the HERITAGE SERIES makes available documents and critical responses that are not available anywhere else.  Paul Breman's series of African American poets, edited from England, did a much better job of tracking important developments in black American verse than the preponderance of America's white publishing houses could bring themselves to do.  The HERITAGE series occupies a unique place in literary history, and Ramey's volume will be the first introduction many younger readers will have to this legendary collection of books.

The second volume is Ramey's much anticipated critical study of slave songs and the birth of African American poetry.  As Abiola Irele remarks, "This book restores the spiritual to its rightful place in the American literary canon and will certainly stimulate scholarly interest in the spiritual as art form."

Get stimulated -- read these books -- 

click here to "search inside" the HERITAGE SERIES book.

then click here for SLAVE SONGS and the BIRTH OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY.