Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction [Paperback]

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 writersMcKay and Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance; Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison in the '40s and '50s; Himes in the '50s and '60ssaw 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.

A wide-ranging and illuminating look at one of the most misunderstood figures in African American story and song.

Jerry H. Bryant is Emeritus Professor of English at California State University.

Preliminary Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. The Classic Badman and the Ballad
The Badman Boaster
The Faces of Stagolee
2. Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: Displaced Rage in a Preindustrial Culture
3. Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counter Stereotypes, and Initial Probes
Religion, Romance, and Race
Paul Laurence Dunbar: Southern Innocence, Northern Sin
James Weldon Johnson: Murder in Ragtime
James D. Corrothers and The Black Cat Club
4. From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and Thirties
The New Negro Finds the Folk
Rudolph Fisher's Harlem Tour
Claude McKay's Home to Harlem
Arna Bontemps's Don't-Care Folk
Zora Neale Hurston: Country Men and Women