Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-326) and index.

"I'm tore down" -- Lynching and the birth of a blues tradition -- "Make my getaway" -- Southern violence and blues entrepreneurship in W.C. Handy's Father of the blues -- Dis(re)memberment blues -- Narratives of abjection and redress -- "Shoot myself a cop" -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy blues" as social text -- Guns, knives, and buckets of blood -- The predicament of blues culture -- "The blade already crying in my flesh" -- Zora Neale Hurston's blues narratives.

Winner of the 2004 C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Seems Like Murder Here offers a revealing new account of the blues tradition. Far from mere laments about lost loves and hard times, the blues emerge in this provocative study as vital responses to spectacle lynchings and the violent realities of African American life in the Jim Crow South. With brilliant interpretations of both classic songs and literary works, from the autobiographies of W.C. Handy, David Honeyboy Edwards, and B.B. King to the poetry of Langston Hughes and the novels of Zora Neal.

Description based on print version record.