"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. This title connects this figure with similar characters in African American 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.

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