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Harris covers new ground in tracing the ways in which African American writers characterized Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime and since his death. Harris identifies King as a trickster--like Brer Rabbit, Tar Baby, or badman Stackolee--known for his cleverness, courtships, rhetoric, charm, and survival. She observes that during King's lifetime thinly disguised portrayals depicted his preaching, winning personality, and activism as morally ambivalent or even negative. . . . Harris comes to the convincing conclusion that history merges with the ideal--and King is a hero who continues to stimulate inspiration and creativity. Highly recommended. All readers. --CHOICE Trudier Harris's study is an absorbing, informative, and significant contribution to the fields of African American literary, historical, and folkloric studies. Harris charts new territory in her scrupulously researched work. Her extended analyses of works such as Bullins's The Gentleman Caller are seminal, and her treatment of new, contemporary authors such as Katori Hall will introduce the academic and nonacademic reading public to artists still wrestling with the legacy that King has left us. Analyses of established, canonical writers are also valuable because they will potentially draw readers beyond the standard academic ones. Last but certainly not least, the book complicates our preexisting and popular understanding of MLK, analyzing him not as a virtuous figure above reproach but as a flesh-and-blood one with foibles and even severe flaws. Harris does a good job of exploring the works that explore King in a measured way, without (re)deifying him or demonizing him. --Keith Clark, author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson and The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry

"""Harris covers new ground in tracing the ways in which African American writers characterized Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime and since his death. Harris identifies King as a trickster--like Brer Rabbit, Tar Baby, or badman Stackolee--known for his cleverness, courtships, rhetoric, charm, and survival. She observes that during King's lifetime thinly disguised portrayals depicted his preaching, winning personality, and activism as morally ambivalent or even negative. . . . Harris comes to the convincing conclusion that history merges with the ideal--and King is a hero who continues to stimulate inspiration and creativity. Highly recommended. All readers."" --CHOICE ""Trudier Harris's study is an absorbing, informative, and significant contribution to the fields of African American literary, historical, and folkloric studies. Harris charts new territory in her scrupulously researched work. Her extended analyses of works such as Bullins's The Gentleman Caller are seminal, and her treatment of new, contemporary authors such as Katori Hall will introduce the academic and nonacademic reading public to artists still wrestling with the legacy that King has left us. Analyses of established, canonical writers are also valuable because they will potentially draw readers beyond the standard academic ones. Last but certainly not least, the book complicates our preexisting and popular understanding of MLK, analyzing him not as a virtuous figure above reproach but as a flesh-and-blood one with foibles and even severe flaws. Harris does a good job of exploring the works that explore King in a measured way, without (re)deifying him or demonizing him."" --Keith Clark, author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson and The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry"

""Harris covers new ground in tracing the ways in which African American writers characterized Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime and since his death. Harris identifies King as a trickster--like Brer Rabbit, Tar Baby, or badman Stackolee--known for his cleverness, courtships, rhetoric, charm, and survival. She observes that during King's lifetime thinly disguised portrayals depicted his preaching, winning personality, and activism as morally ambivalent or even negative. . . . Harris comes to the convincing conclusion that history merges with the ideal--and King is a hero who continues to stimulate inspiration and creativity. Highly recommended. All readers."" --CHOICE ""Trudier Harris's study is an absorbing, informative, and significant contribution to the fields of African American literary, historical, and folkloric studies. Harris charts new territory in her scrupulously researched work. Her extended analyses of works such as Bullins's The Gentleman Caller are seminal, and her treatment of new, contemporary authors such as Katori Hall will introduce the academic and nonacademic reading public to artists still wrestling with the legacy that King has left us. Analyses of established, canonical writers are also valuable because they will potentially draw readers beyond the standard academic ones. Last but certainly not least, the book complicates our preexisting and popular understanding of MLK, analyzing him not as a virtuous figure above reproach but as a flesh-and-blood one with foibles and even severe flaws. Harris does a good job of exploring the works that explore King in a measured way, without (re)deifying him or demonizing him."" --Keith Clark, author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson and The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry

Author Information

Former J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Trudier Harris is a professor of English at the University of Alabama. She is the author, editor, or coeditor of twenty-three books, most recently The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South (a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature, and The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

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