Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition is a compilation of literary and cultural works that originated from call and response patterns in African and African American cultural traditions. The 1997 anthology includes works representing the centuries-long emergence of this distinctly Black literary and cultural aesthetic in fiction, poetry, drama, essays, sermons, speeches, criticism, journals, and song lyrics from spirituals to rap. Writings ranging from Queen Latifah to Phyllis Wheatley and LeRoi Jones are included within this volume.
The anthology, published by the Houghton Mifflin Company, organizes its selections around three themes: the pattern of call and response, the journey toward freedom, and major historical events in the African American experience. The anthology editors have woven together selections, critical analysis of the texts, historical background, and biographies into a scholarly, unified, and chronological approach to African American literature and culture. Dr. Patricia Liggins Hill of the University of San Francisco served as general editor of the anthology.
Famous quotes containing the words call, riverside, anthology, african, american, literary and/or tradition:
“Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“Upset at the young wife’s
first loss of virtue
in a riverside thicket,
a flock of birds
flies up,
mourning the loss
with their wings.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“You’ve strung your breasts
with a rattling rope of pearls,
tied a jangling belt
around those deadly hips
and clinking jewelled anklets
on both your feet.
So, stupid,
if you run off to your lover like this,
banging all these drums,
then why
do you shudder with all this fear
and look up, down;
in every direction?”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.?, Kashmirian king, compiler, author of some of the poems in the anthology which bears his name. translated from the Amaruataka by Martha Ann Selby, vs. 31, Motilal Banarsidass (1983)
“All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“...it is decidedly an advantage to American homes that so many of the wives and mothers have served as teachers before becoming house-directors. ...”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as “spectacles” to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.... The learned are mere literary drudges.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
““Where do architects and designers get their ideas?” The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism?”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)