Born in a Mighty Bad Land – The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction de Jerry H. Bryant

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

Jerry H. Bryant

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."

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Introduction1. The Classic Badman and the BalladThe Badman Boaster; The Faces of Stagolee2. Postbellum Violence and Its Causes: "Displaced Rage" in a Preindustrial Culture3. Between the Wars: The Genteel Novel, Counter Stereotypes, and Initial ProbesReligion, Romance, and RacePaul Laurence Dunbar: Southern Innocence, Northern Sin; James Weldon Johnson: Murder in Ragtime; James D. Corrothers and The Black Cat Club4. From the Genteel to the Primitive: The Twenties and ThirtiesThe "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 Women5. The Ghetto Bildungsroman: From the Forties to the SeventiesRichard 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 Updated6. Toasts: Tales of the "Bad Nigger"The Toast and Its Mysteries; Return to Stagolee; The Put-Down; The Fall7. Chester Himes: Harlem AbsurdA Man of Anger; The Harlem Novels; The Badmen; Coffin Ed and Grave Digger8. A "Toast" Novel: Pimps, Hoodlums and Hit MenThe 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 Goines9. Walter Mosley and the Violent Men of WattsSocrates Fortlow; Raymond "Mouse" Alexander; Easy Rawlins10. Rap: Going Commercial11. The Badman and the Storyteller: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood TrilogyBrothers 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 Storytelling12. Toni Morrison: Ulysses, Badmen, and Archetypes: Abandoning Violence OutlawsLaying the Foundation: The Bluest Eye and Sula; Into the Limelight: Song of Solomon and Tar Baby; Trilogy: Three Stages of the Badman LovingAppendix: Analysis of Thirty Prototype Ballads