Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation

“Murray set standards for consideration of African American centrality to American cultural identity, and Baker honors him with these 27 essays. A "tribute as well as a critical examination," this volume will inspire readers to look again at Murray's remarkable offerings, e.g., The Omni-Americans, Train Whistle Guitar, Stomping the Blues, and Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. Recommended.”
—CHOICE
 
“[This book] makes a very important contribution to the field of African American literary and cultural studies. . . . It present[s] the many facets of Murray’s intellectual odyssey . . . [illuminating his] contribution to our national discussion on race, as well as his germinal insights on music, visual art, and literature.”
—Herman Beavers, author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson
 

“I appreciated the way the voices ‘sound’ in the volume, from Murray’s own voice, through criticism, back to Murray in interviews, and on to other voices. It has the feeling of an ensemble—or, to use one of Mr. Murray’s metaphors, a jazz band, with Murray’s voice ‘taking the break’ at key points. The melody is Murray, and there are countless riffs on his work.”
—Carolyn J. Medine, coeditor of Teaching African American Religions
 

“Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation enlarges our understanding of an artist who is, as the book makes clear, one of the most important writers of our time.”
—Mobile Press-Register