Michael K. Johnson. Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1-1-2015

Abstract

Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of the African American West through close readings of select texts from a variety of media. This approach allows for both an in-depth analysis of individual texts and a discussion of material often left out or under-represented in studies focused only on traditional literary material: heretofore unexamined writing by Rose Gordon, who wrote for local western publications rather than for a national audience; memoirs and letters of musicians, performers, and singers (such as W. C. Handy) who lived in or wrote about touring the American West; Percival Everett’s fiction addressing contemporary black western experience; the novels and films of Oscar Micheaux; black-cast westerns starring Herb Jeffries; largely unappreciated and unexamined episodes from the “golden age of western television” that feature African American actors; film and television westerns that use science fiction settings to imagine a “post-racial” or “post-soul” frontier. Despite recent interest in the history of the African American West, we know very little about how the African American past in the West has been depicted in a full range of imaginative forms. Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos takes us another step further in the journey of discovering how the African American West has been experienced, imagined, and performed.

Original Publication Citation

Alexander, B. K. (2015). Review: Michael K. Johnson. Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014, 304 pp. Western American Literature, Spring, 50.1, 77-78.

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