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Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature, Josh-Wade Ferguson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature” revises the methodological assumptions that have underwritten our understanding of blues literature and the politics of race and region that surround it. Where previous commentators have defined blues literature primarily through its formal and thematic connections with blues music and with the sociohistorical contours of black southern life more generally this dissertation expands the boundaries of how we conceive blues literature by examining Langston Hughes’ poems “The Weary Blues” (1925) and “Po Boy Blues” (1926) August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011) James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods …