An effective mixed-genre discussion of issues in sociolinguistics, language policy, and literacy education that should be of interest to English and language arts teachers at all levels.
~National Council of Teachers of English
This book is a classic that should appeal to parents, students of sociolinguistics and education, and those interested in the language challenges that face youth. Strongly recommended.
~Humanities
Gilyard is a knowledgeable, diplomatic lecturer on issues of language and education pertaining to African Americans. Gilyard's writing style is provocative, and he brings an astute, different viewpoint to American social commentary.
~Community Review
This latest book by Keith Gilyard is a brilliant, inspiring collection of personal essays about freedom and literacy, and the life forces that can empower us in our quest to 'flip the script.' There are profound truths in this visionary work from a major voice in the field. Written in an engaging style by a homeboy scholar, the book is a must-read for those of us engaged in the educational enterprise
~Geneva Smitherman, University Distinguished Professor Emerita, Michigan State University
The collection of eleven essays displays a remarkable breadth of knowledge, an inventive and playful use of language, provocative thoughts, wisdom and insight.
~Composition Forum
Keith Gilyard has done an impressive job! This excellent and long overdue introduction to the work of an important writer and literary activist allows us to carefully reevaluate John Oliver Killens's place in the history of postwar American and African American literature. Keith Gilyard's thoughtful and informed study is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the vibrant, controversial, and often deliberately misinterpreted Black Arts Movement.
~Lorenzo Thomas, Poetry Foundation Award winner
Though Killens no longer has a significant readership, he played a large part in the postwar development of African American literature, a point that is made convincingly in Liberation Memories.
~The Washington Post
Gilyard's holistic approach to Killens—as novelist, essayist, teacher, sociopolitical activist, and organizer of literary conferences—posits him as heir to the likes of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois, for the latter's insistence on the compatibility of aesthetics and propaganda in particular. Gilyard underscores the literary distinction and integrity Killens achieves through a deft, at times unique adaptation of African American vernacular art forms and modes of expression to the aesthetic uses of his fiction.
~Alvin Aubert, professor emeritus, Wayne State University Press
A masterwork by a master scholar. An important reappraisal of John O. Killens, a literary visionary whose influence on African American letters is both unprecedented and unsung. In Liberation Memories, Keith Gilyard has produced a visionary work worthy of its subject matter. A masterful fusion of heart and scholarship that illuminates Killens's works and his unrelenting efforts as an ideological orchestrator in an evocative text that questions and clarifies the historical/cultural/destinic dynamics of literature and the visionary artists. In doing so, Gilyard suggests a seminal griotic paradigm for approaching and assessing African American literature, letters, writers, and thinkers.
~Arthur Flowers, professor emeritus, Syracuse University
