Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition

by Adam Gussow

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226310981
• ISBN13: 9780226310985
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not for the faint of heart

This was an interesting read though a bit too scholarly at times. I am a fan of Mr. Gussows work and while I enjoyed this book I don't know if it will be everyone's cup of tea. If you have an interest in the subject matter I do recommend this to you as there is nothing else out there quite like it.

Race and Art in America

Adam Gussow has written an absorbing and innovative study of American "blues texts" over the past century, demonstrating that this genre permeates several media, from music and fiction to autobiography and journalism, and that a pervasive theme in the blues, even its prime initiative, is a response to the wave of race murders and lynchings that occurred in the Southern states after 1890. "Spectacle lynchings," widely-publicized acts of mob vigilance, gave rise to a rhetoric of retribution in the blues, understandably directed toward white oppressors, but also more tragically toward black bodies and souls. The complex burden of the blues, Gussow argues, is to perform rites of exorcism that re-enact violence without the comfort of catharsis or transubtantiation, the usual consequences of tragedy. His chapters successively explore the subjects of lynchings, dismemberment, murder, riot, and knifings, each time through a central author or text, set amidst a rich array of ancillary texts and voices. The chapters are models of rigorous historical research and intelligently modulated critical discussion. This book is an accurate and eloquently argued work of cultural imagination. It raises deeply troubling questions about race and art in America, and it will endure for a long while as a very distinguished publication.