"Born in a mighty bad land": the violent man in African American folklore and fiction

Abstract

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 Negro Finds the 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 5. The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the Seventies Richard Wright: Bigger Thomas and a New Consciousness James Baldwin: Escaping from Violence Ralph Ellison's Rinehart The Ghetto Setting The Nurturing Ghetto I (Mark Kennedy and Herbert Simmons) The Nurturing Ghetto II: The Autobiographical Vision (Claude Brown) The Struggle for Moral Character (Ronald Fair and George Cain) The Code of the Street: The Bildungsroman World Updated 6. Toasts: Tales of the Bad Nigger The and Its Mysteries Return to Stagolee The Put-Down The Fall 7. Chester Himes: Harlem Absurd A Man of Anger The Harlem Novels The Badmen Coffin Ed and Grave Digger 8. A Toast Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums and Hit Men The Struggle Between the Hip and the Lame The Hip Victorious Anger Over White Racism The Violent Style The Fantasy of Sexual Dominance Instinct, Justice, and the Allure of The Life A Special Kind of Squalor, A Special Kind of Guilt Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines 9. Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of Watts Socrates Fortlow Raymond Mouse Alexander Easy Rawlins 10. Rap: Going Commercial 11. The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood Trilogy Brothers and Keepers: A Family Matter Hiding Place: Looking for Manhood Rot and Renewal Sent for You Yesterday: The Skeins of History and the Sacrament of Storytelling 12. Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes: Abandoning Violence Outlaws Laying the Foundation: The Bluest Eye and Sula Into the Limelight: Song of Solomon and Tar Baby Trilogy: Three Stages of the Badman Loving Appendix: Analysis of Thirty Prototype Ballads