Henry Dumas: Prophet of the Afrosurreal Renaissance

Abstract

This literary biography locates the life and work of Henry Dumas – one of the most unique and under-studied writers of the Black Arts Movement – as a radical, revolutionary nexus of Afrosurrealist thought. Afrosurrealism, a term popularized by scholar D. Scot Miller, is a genre of Black American writing wherein Black artists mobilize the aesthetic techniques of surrealism to express the particular experience of being Black in America. Through his “skill at creating an entirely different world organically connected to this one,” to quote Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas serves as a vital connecting point between the previous era of Black surrealism and our current Afrosurreal Renaissance. Thus, this literary and critical biography advances a twofold goal: to grant Dumas his rightful place as a central figure in African American literary history, and to recognize the expansive and important scope of the modern Afrosurrealist tradition.