Description:
Asante weaves a tapestry of Black strength, vulnerability, and resolve in a collection of Black poetic expressions through what is likely to become a literary favorite of 400 Years of Witnessing: A Memoir of a People 1619-2019.
Brief description: Molefi Kete Asante is an activist intellectual who is currently Professor and Chair, Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University and founder of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. Asante has written 85 books, among the most recent are The American Demagogue, Revolutionary Pedagogy, The History of Africa, Classical Africa, An Afrocentric Manifesto, The Afrocentric Idea, As I Run Toward Africa; African Pyramids of Knowledge; Facing South: An African Orientation to Knowledge. Recognized as one of the 10 most widely cited African scholars, Asante is the founder of the theory of Afrocentricity. Asante was born in Valdosta, Georgia, of Sudanese (Nubian) and Nigerian (Yoruba) heritage.
Review Quotes:
"I have read a number of poems throughout my years as a scholar. Many of them offer profound expressions of literary artistry and insight. However, never before I have read poems such as what Dr. Molefi K. Asante has presented in 400 Years. Touched to my core by the carefully considered and soul-stirring words of poems such as Ancestral Gathering, Oyo Reborn, and I Call for Oduduwa in the Belly of Odin, I found myself moved to engage in ancestral prayer and reflective spiritual mediation and stillness just to process and appreciate the full magnitude of these writings. This book is a brilliant continuation of Dr. Molefi K. Asante's valued contributions to the Afrocentric paradigm and creates another avenue for people interested in Afrocentricity access."