Dismantling Black Manhood: An Historical and Literary Analysis of the Legacy of Slavery

This book examines the social, economic, and cultural factors that have produced the current crisis in African American masculinity, tracing the development of concepts of manhood from pre-colonial West Africa through the Emancipation Proclamation in America. The study begins with an exploration of the cultural context of manhood and the social development of boys into men in West Africa which was based on the rites of passage and the mastery of such social skills as hunting and farming. En...