An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement.

I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.

The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race.

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but to do so in order to come out on the other side, to experience a humanity that is neither colorless nor reducible to color.