The shades and structures of the blues had an immense impact on the poetry of Langston Hughes. Steven C. Tracy provides a cultural context for Hughes's work while revealing how Hughes mined Black oral and literary traditions to create his poetry. Comparing Hughes's poems to blues texts, Tracy reveals how Hughes's experimental forms reflect the poetics, structures, rhythms, and musical techniques of the music. Tracy also offers a discography of recordings by the artists--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others--who most influenced the poet.
Tracey Barr Book order




- 2024
- 2023
Mending the Soul, newly revised and updated, provides a well-researched biblical and scientific understanding of the complexity of abuse, its effects, and an integrated path to healing.
- 2022
"Despite living and working in California, one of the county's most environmentally progressive states, environmental justice activists have spent decades fighting for clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe, healthy communities. Evolution of a Movement tells their story-from the often-raucous protests of the 1980s and 1990s to activists' growing presence inside the halls of the state capitol in the 2000s and 2010s. Tracy E. Perkins traces how shifting political contexts combined with activists' own efforts to institutionalize their work within nonprofits and state structures. By revealing these struggles and transformations, Perkins offers a new lens for understanding environmental justice activism in California. Drawing on case studies and 125 interviews with activists from Sacramento to the California-Mexico border, Perkins explores the successes and failures of the environmental justice movement in California. She shows why some activists have moved away from the disruptive "outsider" political tactics common in the movement's early days and embraced traditional political channels of policy advocacy, electoral politics, and working from within the state's political system to enact change. Although some see these changes as a sign of the growing sophistication of the environmental justice movement, others point to the potential of such changes to blunt grassroots power. At a time when environmental justice scholars and activists face pressing questions about the best route for enacting meaningful change, this book provides insight into the strengths and limitations of social movement institutionalization"-- Provided by publisher
- 2002
Earn-lay atin-Lay? No, not that kind of Latin! You can learn true Latin, with conjugations, declensions, and all those extra syllables - and it's easier than you think. In fact, most people mistakenly think of learning Latin as perhaps the most useless, tedious, and difficult thing to do on earth. They couldn't be more wrong.