Born in a Mighty Bad Land

by Bryant, Jerry H.

• ISBN13: 9780253215789
• ISBN10: 0253215781
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

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.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
The Classic Badman and the Ballad	9	(10)
Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: ``Displaced Rage'' in a Preindustrial Culture	19	(6)
Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counterstereotypes, and Initial Probes	25	(15)
From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and Thirties	40	(23)
The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the Seventies	63	(26)
Toasts: Tales of the ``Bad Nigger''	89	(10)
Chester Himes: Harlem Absurd	99	(20)
A ``Toast'' Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums, and Hit Men	119	(23)
Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of Watts	142	(12)
Rap: Going Commercial	154	(12)
The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood Trilogy	166	(13)
Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes---Abandoning Violence	179	(18)
Appendix: Analysis of Thirty Prototype Ballads	197	(2)
Notes	199	(30)
Index	229