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

TOC

C O N T E N T S acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Classic Badman and the Ballad 9 2 Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: “Displaced Rage” in a Preindustrial Culture 19 3 Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counterstereotypes, and Initial Probes 25 4 From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and Thirties 40 5 The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the Seventies 63 6 Toasts: Tales of the “Bad Nigger” 89 7 Chester Himes: Harlem Absurd 99 8 A “Toast” Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums, and Hit Men 119 9 Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of Watts 142 10 Rap: Going Commercial 154 11 The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman’s Homewood Trilogy 166 12 Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes—Abandoning Violence 179 appendix: analysis of thirty prototype ballads 197 notes 199 index 229 ...