pt. I. Epic impulses/narratives of ancestry
Imperial mother wit, gumbo erotics: from Sunjata to The souls of Black folk
Of root figures and buggy jiving: Toomer, Hurston, and Ellison
Myth-making, mother-child-ness, and epic renamings: Malcolm X, Kunta Kinte, and Milkman Dead
pt. II. Bound cultures/the creolization of Dixie
"Two heads fighting": African roots, geechee/gombo tales
Creole self-fashioning: Joel Chandler Harris's "other fellow"
Searching for spiritual soil: milk bonds and the "maumer tongue"
pt. III. Shadows of Africans/gothic representations
The spears of the party of the merciful: Senegambian Muslims, scriptural mercy, and plantation slavery
Babo and bras coupé: malign machinations, gothic plots
"Never once but like ripples": on boomeranging trumps, rememory, and the novel as medium.