Poet, singer, actor, and activist Amina Baraka (1942– ), also once known as Bibi Amina Baraka, was born Sylvia Robinson in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was raised in Newark, New Jersey, where she has managed the Women’s Division of the Community for a Unified NewArk and organized women’s conferences for the Congress of Afrikan People and for the Revolutionary Communist League. As a poet, she engages themes of social justice, family, and feminism in works such as the poetry collection Blues in All Hues (2014). Her work is also featured in the anthologies Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (1994; Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan, editors) and Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (2001). With her late husband, writer, activist, and educator Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), she co-edited Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (1983), The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987), and 5 Boptrees (1992). As an actress, Amina Baraka appeared in films and on stage. With her husband, she founded Kimako’s Blues People, a community art space in Newark.
