Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me
African-American Narrative Poetry from the Oral Tradition
by Bruce Jackson
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Editions of Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me
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ISBN |
Binding/Format Hardcover |
Publisher Routledge |
Date 2004 |
Price $31.05 |
 Very Good |
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ISBN |
Binding/Format PACKAGE |
Publisher Routledge |
Date 2004 |
Price $13.90 |
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Publisher Notes
Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me is considered one of the great, classic collections of African-American literature and folklore. Originally published by in 1974 in hardcover only, it quickly gained the reputation as a classic collection of Black folk poetry known as "toasts." Toasts are probably the only living form of oral narrative poetry in the U.S.; they represent a vital genre of black folklore. They come from various sources: from streetcorners to jails, from barrooms to academic halls.
The toasts celebrate mythological figures from African-American culture, including the famed "bad man" Stackolee who is said to have murdered a man over a Stetson hat; the famous exploits of the "Signifying Monkey," who outsmarts his stronger opponents in the forest by using his native wits; and stories of the loss of the Titanic, famed in black folklore because of its symbolic significance as a failure of the era's powerful white establishment-and the (perhaps apocryphal) story that the ship's
