[3] Katy L. Chiles described the novel as chronicling various permeations of a diasporic, Black nation-state, exemplified by the transnational odyssey of its protagonist, Henry Blake, through the American South, Canada, and Cuba.

[2] She has also stated that Delany's writing takes an anthropological approach in the ways it highlights Black American southern dialect, national identity, and geography through Blake's interviews of enslaved persons located on the plantations passed through along his insurrectional journey.

Successfully avoiding the ploys of slave catchers, Blake is able to spread his vision of radical revolt amongst the enslaved individuals he meets, eventually guiding a group of escapees to Canada.

Set in Cuba, Part two of Blake; or The Huts of America chronicles Henry's successful retrieval of his wife Maggie as well as his encountering an estranged cousin, Placido (after the Cuban poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés), and his joining a slave vessel headed to continental Africa with the hopes of leading an uprising on its return to Cuba, which is not successful.

[3] However, due to the various textual errors and under-developed historical and contextual insights found in Miller's edition, some of that resulting scholarship has been said to be often informed by misunderstandings of the work.

"[6] McGann's corrected edition of the novel in 2017 (Cambridge 2017) has been credited as having ushered in a new wave of continued scholarly debate regarding various thematic dimensions of Delany's work, some of which include: intratextuality, emigration, transatlantic revolution and collective authorship.