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

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: Jerry H. Bryant
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 04/03/2003
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.08w x 0.53d
ISBN: 9780253215789

About the Author

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