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- Title
"Don't Leave out the Cowboys!": Black Urban Cowboydom and Didactic Afrofuturist Countermemories in Ghetto Cowboy (2011) and Concrete Cowboy (2021).
- Authors
Rabitsch, Stefan; Salisbury, Tracey
- Abstract
Ultimately narratives like Ghetto Cowboy and Concrete Cowboy not only speak to Black historical presence and continuity but also signal continuance since, in the end, Black urban cowboys are doing what they have always done - they keep riding. "Don't Leave out the Cowboys!" By hybridizing Black cowboys - who, if made visible at all, would be expected to populate rural, Western settings - with urban geographies, which are popularly equated with Black despair, decay, and dysfunction rather than agency, pride, and resilience, Ghetto Cowboy and Concrete Cowboy espouse speculative, indeed, almost science-fictional qualities. The novel and its movie adaptation explicitly tackle the mainstream historiographic erasure of the Black cowboy(ing) experience in an effort to (1) expose the vulnerability of the heteronormative, white cowboy myth and, subsequently, (2) (re)assign the culturally privileged role of the cowboy to Black bodies.
- Subjects
INNER cities; COWBOYS; WESTERN films; AFRICAN American history; AFRICAN American authors; FILM adaptations; BLACK Lives Matter movement
- Publication
Western American Literature, 2022, Vol 57, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
0043-3462
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/wal.2022.0013