Born In A Mighty Bad Land

Born In A Mighty Bad Land Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Born In A Mighty Bad Land book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

"Born in a Mighty Bad Land"

Author : Jerry H. Bryant
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2003-04-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0253109892

Get Book

"Born in a Mighty Bad Land" by Jerry H. Bryant Pdf

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.

Prison Life Writing

Author : Simon Rolston
Publisher : Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2021-06-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781771125185

Get Book

Prison Life Writing by Simon Rolston Pdf

Prison Life Writing is the first full-length study of one of the most controversial genres in American literature. By exploring the complicated relationship between life writing and institutional power, this book reveals the overlooked aesthetic innovations of incarcerated people and the surprising literary roots of the U.S. prison system. Simon Rolston observes that the autobiographical work of incarcerated people is based on a conversion narrative, a story arc that underpins the concept of prison rehabilitation and that sometimes serves the interests of the prison system, rather than those on the inside. Yet many imprisoned people rework the conversion narrative the way they repurpose other objects in prison. Like a radio motor retooled into a tattoo gun, the conversion narrative has been redefined by some authors for subversive purposes, including questioning the ostensible emancipatory role of prison writing, critiquing white supremacy, and broadly reimagining autobiographical discourse. An interdisciplinary work that brings life writing scholarship into conversation with prison studies and law and literature studies, Prison Life Writing theorizes how life writing works in prison, explains literature’s complicated entanglements with institutional power, and demonstrates the political and aesthetic innovations of one of America’s most fascinating literary genres.

Bad Men

Author : Howard Rambsy II.
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2020-04-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813944142

Get Book

Bad Men by Howard Rambsy II. Pdf

How have African American writers drawn on "bad" black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art? This is the question posed by Howard Rambsy’s new book, which explores bad men as a central, recurring, and understudied figure in African American literature and music. By focusing on how various iterations of the bad black man figure serve as creative muse and inspiration for literary production, Rambsy puts a wide variety of contemporary African American literary and cultural works in conversation with creativity research for the first time. Employing concepts such as playfulness, productivity, divergent thinking, and problem finding, Rambsy examines the works of a wide range of writers—including Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tyehimba Jess, Trymaine Lee, Adrian Matejka, Aaron McGruder, Evie Shockley, and Kevin Young—who have drawn on notions of bad black men and boys to create innovative and challenging works in a variety of genres. Through groundbreaking readings, Rambsy demonstrates the fruitfulness of viewing black literary art through the lens of creativity research.

African American History Day by Day

Author : Karen Juanita Carrillo
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-08-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781598843613

Get Book

African American History Day by Day by Karen Juanita Carrillo Pdf

The proof of any group's importance to history is in the detail, a fact made plain by this informative book's day-by-day documentation of the impact of African Americans on life in the United States. One of the easiest ways to grasp any aspect of history is to look at it as a continuum. African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events provides just such an opportunity. Organized in the form of a calendar, this book allows readers to see the dates of famous births, deaths, and events that have affected the lives of African Americans and, by extension, of America as a whole. Each day features an entry with information about an important event that occurred on that date. Background on the highlighted event is provided, along with a link to at least one primary source document and references to books and websites that can provide more information. While there are other calendars of African American history, this one is set apart by its level of academic detail. It is not only a calendar, but also an easy-to-use reference and learning tool.

The N Word

Author : Jabari Asim
Publisher : HMH
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2008-08-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780547524948

Get Book

The N Word by Jabari Asim Pdf

A renowned cultural critic untangles the twisted history and future of racism through its most volatile word. The N Word reveals how the term “nigger” has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Jabari Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the “nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self-control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-century “science” then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets. Asim’s conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for the word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history—from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur’s grip on our national psyche.

A Spirit of Dialogue

Author : Christopher N. Okonkwo
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781572336155

Get Book

A Spirit of Dialogue by Christopher N. Okonkwo Pdf

A groundbreaking study, A Spirit of Dialogue examines through extensive, interdisciplinary research, theory, and close reading the intricate reconstructions, extensions, and resonances of the West African myth of spirit children, the "Born-to-Die," in contemporary African American neo-slave narratives. Arguing that the myth, called "Ogbañje" in Igbo language and "àbíkú" in Yoruba, has had over thirty years of uncharted presence in African American literature, Okonkwo advances a compelling case absent in extant scholarship. He traces Ogbañje/the Born-to-Die's appearance in African American texts to a convergence of factors. They include but are not limited to: the impact of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; the 1960s emergence of the contemporary neo-slave narrative; the 1960s and 1970s black consciousness/Black Power movement and the cultural agenda, gendered politics, and centripetal philosophy of the Black Arts movement's nationalist aesthetic; African American identity questions of the post-civil rights and the multicultural eras; and the thematic shifts, as well as the African diaspora orientation of African American fiction of the post-nationalist aesthetic period. A Spirit of Dialogue focuses on the sometimes neglected and understudied works of four canonical African American writers: Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, Tananarive Due's The Between, John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing, and Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved. Okonkwo demonstrates persuasively how the mythic spirit child informs the content and form of these novels, offering Butler, Due, Wideman, and Morrison a non-occidental "code" by which to engage collectively with the various issues integral to the history experience of African-descended people. The paradigm functions, then, as the nexus of a life-affirmative dialogue among the six novels, as well as between them and other works of African religious and literary imagination, particularly Things Fall Apart and Ben Okri's The Famished Road.

Beyond the Rope

Author : Karlos K. Hill
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2016-07-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107044135

Get Book

Beyond the Rope by Karlos K. Hill Pdf

This book tells the story of African Americans' evolving attitudes towards lynching from the 1880s to the present. Unlike most histories of lynching, it explains how African Americans were both purveyors and victims of lynch mob violence and how this dynamic has shaped the meaning of lynching in black culture.

Furiously Funny

Author : Terrence T. Tucker
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 405 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2020-02-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813065601

Get Book

Furiously Funny by Terrence T. Tucker Pdf

"An important and timely expansion of American racial discourse. Tucker’s demonstration of how the comic is not (just) funny and how rage is not (just) destructive is a welcome reminder that willful injustice merits irreverent scorn. "—Derek C. Maus, coeditor of Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights "Adroitly explores how comic rage is a skillfully crafted, multifaceted critique of white supremacy and a soaring articulation of African American humanity and possibility. Sparkling and highly readable scholarship."—Keith Gilyard, author of John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism A combustible mix of fury and radicalism, pathos and pain, wit and love—Terrence Tucker calls it "comic rage," and he shows how it has been used by African American artists to aggressively critique America’s racial divide. In Furiously Funny, Tucker finds that comic rage developed from black oral tradition and first shows up in literature by George Schuyler and Ralph Ellison shortly after World War II. He examines its role in novels and plays, following the growth of the expression into comics and stand-up comedy and film, where Richard Pryor, Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock have all used the technique. Their work, Tucker argues, shares a comic vision that centralizes the African American experience and realigns racial discourse through an unequivocal frustration at white perceptions of blackness. They perpetuate images of black culture that run the risk of confirming stereotypes as a means to ridicule whites for allowing those destructive depictions to reinforce racist hierarchies. At the center of comic rage, then, is a full-throated embrace of African American folk life and cultural traditions that have emerged in defiance of white hegemony’s attempts to devalue, exploit, or distort those traditions. The simultaneous expression of comedy and militancy enables artists to reject the mainstream perspective by confronting white audiences with America’s legacy of racial oppression. Tucker shows how this important art form continues to expand in new ways in the twenty-first century and how it acts as a form of resistance where audiences can engage in subjects that are otherwise taboo.

American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales [3 volumes]

Author : Christopher R. Fee,Jeffrey B. Webb
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1265 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781610695688

Get Book

American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales [3 volumes] by Christopher R. Fee,Jeffrey B. Webb Pdf

A fascinating survey of the entire history of tall tales, folklore, and mythology in the United States from earliest times to the present, including stories and myths from the modern era that have become an essential part of contemporary popular culture. Folklore has been a part of American culture for as long as humans have inhabited North America, and increasingly formed an intrinsic part of American culture as diverse peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania arrived. In modern times, folklore and tall tales experienced a rejuvenation with the emergence of urban legends and the growing popularity of science fiction and conspiracy theories, with mass media such as comic books, television, and films contributing to the retelling of old myths. This multi-volume encyclopedia will teach readers the central myths and legends that have formed American culture since its earliest years of settlement. Its entries provide a fascinating glimpse into the collective American imagination over the past 400 years through the stories that have shaped it. Organized alphabetically, the coverage includes Native American creation myths, "tall tales" like George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and the adventures of "King of the Wild Frontier" Davy Crockett, through to today's "urban myths." Each entry explains the myth or legend and its importance and provides detailed information about the people and events involved. Each entry also includes a short bibliography that will direct students or interested general readers toward other sources for further investigation. Special attention is paid to African American folklore, Asian American folklore, and the folklore of other traditions that are often overlooked or marginalized in other studies of the topic.

Walter Mosley's Detective Novels

Author : Agustín Reyes Torres
Publisher : Universitat de València
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2011-11-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9788437084688

Get Book

Walter Mosley's Detective Novels by Agustín Reyes Torres Pdf

Basat en la perspectiva de la identitat, la consciència i la subjectivitat dels estudiosos negres com Stuart Hall, Bell Hooks, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr i W. I. B. Du Bois, al costat de l'enfocament postcolonial de crítics com Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin i Homi Bhabha entre d'altres, aquest llibre proporciona el marc teòric necessari per a analitzar les novel·les d'Easy Rawlins escrites per Walter Mosley. l'autor s'apropia de les convencions de la novel·la detectivesca per tal de representar la societat americana dels cinquanta i seixanta des d'una perspectiva marginal. La subjectivitat d'Easy Rawlins està determinada pel seu paper com a detectiu, la seva consciència postcolonial com a home negre que ha crescut en una societat dominada pels blancs i, per la seua inclinació i defensa d'una forta cultura afroamericana.

If We Must Die

Author : Aimé J. Ellis
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2011-06-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780814336656

Get Book

If We Must Die by Aimé J. Ellis Pdf

Investigates a variety of texts in which the self-image of poor, urban black men in the U.S. is formed within, by, and against a culture of racial terror and state violence.

Encyclopedia of American Folklore

Author : Linda Watts
Publisher : Infobase Holdings, Inc
Page : 462 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-07-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781646930005

Get Book

Encyclopedia of American Folklore by Linda Watts Pdf

Folklore has been described as the unwritten literature of a culture: its songs, stories, sayings, games, rituals, beliefs, and ways of life. Encyclopedia of American Folklore helps readers explore topics, terms, themes, figures, and issues related to this popular subject. This comprehensive reference guide addresses the needs of multiple audiences, including high school, college, and public libraries, archive and museum collections, storytellers, and independent researchers. Its content and organization correspond to the ways educators integrate folklore within literacy and wider learning objectives for language arts and cultural studies at the secondary level. This well-rounded resource connects United States folk forms with their cultural origin, historical context, and social function. Appendixes include a bibliography, a category index, and a discussion of starting points for researching American folklore. References and bibliographic material throughout the text highlight recently published and commonly available materials for further study. Coverage includes: Folk heroes and legendary figures, including Paul Bunyan and Yankee Doodle Fables, fairy tales, and myths often featured in American folklore, including "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Princess and the Pea" American authors who have added to or modified folklore traditions, including Washington Irving Historical events that gave rise to folklore, including the civil rights movement and the Revolutionary War Terms in folklore studies, such as fieldwork and the folklife movement Holidays and observances, such as Christmas and Kwanzaa Topics related to folklore in everyday life, such as sports folklore and courtship/dating folklore Folklore related to cultural groups, such as Appalachian folklore and African-American folklore and more.

African American Folklore

Author : Anand Prahlad
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 672 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9798216042945

Get Book

African American Folklore by Anand Prahlad Pdf

African American folklore dates back 240 years and has had a significant impact on American culture from the slavery period to the modern day. This encyclopedia provides accessible entries on key elements of this long history, including folklore originally derived from African cultures that have survived here and those that originated in the United States. Inspired by the author's passion for African American culture and vernacular traditions, African American Folklore: An Encyclopedia for Students thoroughly addresses key elements and motifs in black American folklore-especially those that have influenced American culture. With its alphabetically organized entries that cover a wide range of subjects from the word "conjure" to the dance style of "twerking," this book provides readers with a deeper comprehension of American culture through a greater understanding of the contributions of African American culture and black folk traditions. This book will be useful to general readers as well as students or researchers whose interests include African American culture and folklore or American culture. It offers insight into the histories of African American folklore motifs, their importance within African American groups, and their relevance to the evolution of American culture. The work also provides original materials, such as excepts from folktales and folksongs, and a comprehensive compilation of sources for further research that includes bibliographical citations as well as lists of websites and cultural centers.

Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities

Author : Melvin G. Hill
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2019-08-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781498583817

Get Book

Black Bodies and Transhuman Realities by Melvin G. Hill Pdf

This collection explores the Black body in the context of transhuman realities from a variety of literary and artistic perspectives. Contributing to broader thought about Black transcendence of subjectivity in a posthuman framework, the chapters explore interpretations of the “old” and visions of the “new” human.

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution

Author : Dick Weissman
Publisher : Backbeat Books
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2010-05-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781476854526

Get Book

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution by Dick Weissman Pdf

(Book). Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the relationship between American music and politics. Music expert Dick Weissman opens with the dawn of American history, then moves to the book's key focus: 20th-century music songs by and about Native Americans, African-Americans, women, Spanish-speaking groups, and more. Unprecedented in its approach, the book offers a multidisciplinary discussion that is broad and diverse, and illuminates how social events impact music as well as how music impacts social events. Weissman delves deep, covering everything from current Native American music to "music of hate" racist and neo-Nazi music to the music of the Gulf wars, union songs, patriotic and antiwar songs, and beyond. A powerful tool for professors teaching classes about politics and music and a stimulating, accessible read for all kinds of appreciators, from casual music fans to social science lovers and devout music history buffs.