Reviewed by Stacia L. Brown

With Tales of the Out & the Gone, Amiri Baraka makes a kingly return to the ranks of the poignantly militant literati. This new short fiction collection, published by Akashic Books, gathers Baraka’s reprinted material, dating back to the 1970s, as well as previously unpublished work dated up to 2003. Divided into two sections: “War Stories” and “Tales of the Out and the Gone,” the stories vacillate between dense political musings and fantastical, futuristic tales that illustrate Baraka’s more playful side.

The first section of the collection devotes much of its time to exposing not just the bigotry seemingly inherit in America’s political system, but also the compounded disappointment that some of this bigotry is perpetrated by African-American politicians. The theme recurs and is particularly resonant in “New & Old,” “Neo-American,” and “From War Stories.” In the latter, a poignant metaphor emerges when the narrator notices the man who would become the city’s first Black mayor jogging alongside him at Wake-Wake Park. The narrator, who has conditioned himself for distance-running easily passes the candidate on the rigorous uphill trail, while the candidate chuckles admiringly and trudges on. Some time later, the narrator notices the new mayor jogging at the park again—but this time, the politician is running in the opposite direction, favoring the lesser resistance of a downhill run. Baraka’s disheartened stance on the small wave of early ‘80s Blacks holding political office is never as crisp or as affecting as it is in “From War Stories.”

While the work’s second section doesn’t shy away from the themes presented in its first, it takes on a far more playful tone, as Baraka urges readers to ponder some really far-out concepts. For instance, what must it be like to “rhythm travel”? Baraka’s three-page story, bearing that title, tells us that it’s rather like time travel only the travel itself is facilitated by musical intonations: “… I turned into some Sun Ra and hung out inside gravity.” This kind of dreaminess permeates Tales of the Out and the Gone. Its lyricism rings out loudest and best when its pieces break into spontaneous fits poetry, as in “Dig This! Out?,” where the narrative prose serves only as a pretext for truly enchanting and evocative lines of verse: “I am the Charlie Parker Bird/The Soul of Blackness… Out is my Castle/Gone is my Name….”

Longtime Amiri Baraka devotees certainly won’t be disappointed with this latest work. But what’s even more amazing about this work is that, even at its most esoteric, it has the ability to engage readers who may be previously unfamiliar with Baraka the beat poet, playwright, and essayist. Anyone willing to give it a try will walk away with several profundities to ponder.