Freedom Dreams: the Black Radical Imagination.

• Author: Wellington, Darryl Lorenzo

by Robin D. G. Kelley Beacon Press. 224 pages. $24.00.

In the introduction to Freedom Dreams, Robin D. G. Kelley urges us to imagine a better tomorrow even in a cynical culture. Kelley follows up with a short history of black radicalism and its contribution to historical freedom movements. "These renegade black intellectuals/activists/ artists challenged and reshaped communism, surrealism, and radical feminism, and in doing so produced brilliant theoretical insights that might have pushed these movements in new directions." Freedom Dreams is an unapologetically romantic text--a book of heroes such as Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis, and the little remembered, but...