"Born in a Mighty Bad Land" : The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction.

By: Bryant, Jerry HMaterial type: TextTextPublisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2003Copyright date: ©2003Description: 1 online resource (251 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9780253109897Subject(s): African American men in literature | African Americans -- Folklore | American fiction -- African American authors -- History and criticism | Literature and folklore -- United States | Men in literature | Violence -- Folklore | Violence in literatureGenre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version:: "Born in a Mighty Bad Land" : The Violent Man in African American Folklore and FictionDDC classification: 813.009/355 LOC classification: PS374.V58 -- B79 2003ebOnline resources: Click to View
Contents:
Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 The Classic Badman and the Ballad -- 2 Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: "Displaced Rage" in a Preindustrial Culture -- 3 Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counterstereotypes, and Initial Probes -- 4 From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and Thirties -- 5 The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the Seventies -- 6 Toasts: Tales of the "Bad Nigger" -- 7 Chester Himes: Harlem Absurd -- 8 A "Toast" Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums, and Hit Men -- 9 Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of Watts -- 10 Rap: Going Commercial -- 11 The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood Trilogy -- 12 Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes-Abandoning Violence -- Appendix: Analysis of Thirty Prototype Ballads -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author.
Summary: The figure of the violent man in the African American imagination has a long history. He can be found in 19th-century bad man ballads like "Stagolee" and "John Hardy," as well as in the black convict recitations that influenced "gangsta" rap. "Born in a Mighty Bad Land" connects this figure with similar characters in African American fiction. Many writers -- McKay and Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance; Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison in the '40s and '50s; Himes in the '50s and '60s -- saw the "bad nigger" as an archetypal figure in the black imagination and psyche. "Blaxploitation" novels in the '70s made him a virtually mythical character. More recently, Mosley, Wideman, and Morrison have presented him as ghetto philosopher and cultural adventurer. Behind the folklore and fiction, many theories have been proposed to explain the source of the bad man's intra-racial violence. Jerry H. Bryant explores all of these elements in a wide-ranging and illuminating look at one of the most misunderstood figures in African American culture.
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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 The Classic Badman and the Ballad -- 2 Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: "Displaced Rage" in a Preindustrial Culture -- 3 Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counterstereotypes, and Initial Probes -- 4 From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and Thirties -- 5 The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the Seventies -- 6 Toasts: Tales of the "Bad Nigger" -- 7 Chester Himes: Harlem Absurd -- 8 A "Toast" Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums, and Hit Men -- 9 Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of Watts -- 10 Rap: Going Commercial -- 11 The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood Trilogy -- 12 Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes-Abandoning Violence -- Appendix: Analysis of Thirty Prototype Ballads -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author.

The figure of the violent man in the African American imagination has a long history. He can be found in 19th-century bad man ballads like "Stagolee" and "John Hardy," as well as in the black convict recitations that influenced "gangsta" rap. "Born in a Mighty Bad Land" connects this figure with similar characters in African American fiction. Many writers -- McKay and Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance; Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison in the '40s and '50s; Himes in the '50s and '60s -- saw the "bad nigger" as an archetypal figure in the black imagination and psyche. "Blaxploitation" novels in the '70s made him a virtually mythical character. More recently, Mosley, Wideman, and Morrison have presented him as ghetto philosopher and cultural adventurer. Behind the folklore and fiction, many theories have been proposed to explain the source of the bad man's intra-racial violence. Jerry H. Bryant explores all of these elements in a wide-ranging and illuminating look at one of the most misunderstood figures in African American culture.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.

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