Description:
Explores lyrical representations of romantic and sexual betrayal in the blues, revealing deceit and entrapment constraining the physical, socioeconomic, and political movement of African Americans. Argues that blues music calls for a reckoning while expressing faith in a secular and moral justice-to-come.
Brief description: Julia Simon is Professor of French and is on the faculty of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of five books, including The Inconvenient Lonnie Johnson: Blues, Race, Identity, also published by Penn State University Press.
Review Quotes:
"Simon's overall argument is compelling, her scholarship surpassingly good, and her exegeses of individual blues songs are consistently insightful and even scintillating. Debt and Redemption in the Blues is a major work of blues scholarship."
--Adam Gussow, author of Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition