Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

He received the PEN Open Book Award formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Himself
Motherland (2010). His father Coyt Leverette Jones worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator.

He received the PEN Open Book Award formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Along with James Baldwin Baraka was one of the most respected and most widely publiAmiri Barakad Black writers of his generation.