Blues Narrative Form, African American Fiction, and the African Diaspora

This essay examines key narratives in the African American tradition as rhetorically motivated and pedagogically engaged extensions of the musical genre known as the blues. Through the process of identifying, describing, organizing, and interpreting the elements of what can be termed blues narrative form, the essay argues that in these narratives performer-listener relationships draw from and also extend the rhetorical dimensions of blues music, lyrics, and performance styles. The essay introduces a taxonomy of examples developed from a set of approximately one hundred novels and narratives, and proposes several narratological terms to signify these narratives’ connections with blues music, specifically strategic variation, vernacular delivery, and participatory musicality. More generally, the concept of blues narrative form provides an advance over that of the “blues novel” because it helps to foreground often-overlooked narrative elements that have given unique rhetorical dynamism to the century-long practice of literary blues writing and its connections to the African diaspora.