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Urban fiction, also known as Street lit, is a literary genre set, as the name implies, in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living. Profanity, sex, and violence are usually explicit, with the writer not shying away from or watering-down the material. In this respect, urban fiction shares some common threads with dystopian or survivalist fiction.

Genesis and historical forces behind urban fiction[link]

Contemporary urban fiction was (and largely still is) a genre written by and for African Americans. In his famous essay “The Souls of Black Folk,” W. E. B. Du Bois discussed how a veil separated the African American community from the outside world.^[1] By extension, fiction written by people outside the African American culture could not (at least with any degree of verisimilitude) depict the people, settings, and events experienced by people in that culture. Try as some might, those who grew up outside the veil (i.e., outside the urban culture) simply could not write fiction truly grounded in inner-city and African American life.

City novels of yesteryear that depict the low-income survivalist realities of city living can also be considered urban fiction or street lit. In her book, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Street Literature (2011), Vanessa Irvin Morris points out that titles considered canonical or "classic" today, could be considered the urban fiction or "street lit" of its day. Such titles that depict the inner-city realities of city living from yesteryear include titles such as Stephen Crane's Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838) and Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods (1902), to name a few. In this vein, urban fiction is not just an African American or Latino phenomenon, but rather, the genre exists along a historical continuum that includes stories from diverse cultural and ethnic experiences.

Emergence of contemporary urban fiction[link]

In the 1970s, during the culmination of the Black Power movement, a jailed Black man named Robert Beck took the pen name Iceberg Slim and wrote Pimp, a dark, gritty tale of life in the inner-city underworld. While the book contained elements of the Black Power agenda, it was most notable for its unsparing depiction of street life. Iceberg Slim wrote many other novels and attained an international following. Some of the terminology he used in his books crossed over into the lexicon of Black English.^[2] Other writers included Donald Goines^[3] and, notably, Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, which was published in 1965. Also published that year was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Because this non-fictional read captured the realistic nature of African American urban life for coming-of-age young men, the book has consistently served as a standard for reading among African American teenaged boys.

Hip Hop Lit: Hip Hop Music as an Urban Ballad[link]

During the 1980s and early 1990s, urban fiction in print experienced a decline. However, one could make a cogent argument that urban tales simply moved from print to music,^[4] as hip hop music exploded in popularity, with harsh, gritty stories such as "The Message" and "Dopeman," set to a driving, strident drum-kit rhythm. Of course, for every emcee who signed a recording contract and made the airwaves, ten more amateurs plied the streets and local clubs, much like urban bards, griots or troubadours telling urban fiction in an informal, oral manner rather than in a neat, written form. One of the most famous emcees, Tupac Shakur, is sometimes called a ghetto prophet and is undeniably an author of urban fiction in lyrical form. Shakur also wrote a book of poetry called The Rose That Grew From Concrete.

Hip Hop lit in print form, though, is thriving.^[5] Non-fiction books from players in the hip hop realm such as Russell Simmons, Kevin Liles, LL Cool J, and FUBU founder Daymond John are also filed in this genre. Carmen Bryant and Karrine Steffans have both written blockbuster books for this audience, as has shock jock Wendy Williams. Both Steffans and emcee 50 Cent had such success with their books that they were given their own imprints to usher in similar authors. 50 Cent's G-Unit Books adds a legitimacy to a fictional genre that was previously disregarded.

Contemporary Street Lit: The new wave of urban fiction[link]

Toward the end of the 1990s, urban fiction experienced a revival, as demand for novels authentically conveying the urban experience increased, and new business models enabled fledgling writers to more easily bring a manuscript to market. One of the first writers in this new cycle of urban fiction was Omar Tyree, who published the novel Flyy Girl in 1996, but reissued it as a reprint in 1999. The genre really gained momentum in 1999 with Sister Souljah's bestseller The Coldest Winter Ever.^[6] Teri Woods's True to the Game was also published in 1999, and became the standard from which the entrepreneurial publishing and distribution of contemporary urban fiction took note. The simultaneous publishing of these three novels created a momentum of readership for urban fiction and carried that wave for years. Thus "Coldest Winter Ever," "True to the Game," and "Flyy Girl" are considered classics in the renaissance of the genre ^[7].

Other major writers of contemporary urban fiction include Ashley & JaQuavis Coleman, K'wan Foye, Treasure E. Blue, Wahida Clark, Anthony Whyte, Erick Gray, Shannon Holmes, Deborah Cardona, Vickie Stringer, Miasha, T.N. Baker, Deja King, Solomon Jones, Nikki Turner, Jeff Rivera, and the writing duo Meesha Mink & De'Nesha Diamond. Other notable urban-fiction writers include Kole Black, author of The Chance She Took, which was released 2007, and The Risk of Chance, which was released 2008 by Spaulden Publishing. In 2009, the first known urban Islamic fiction novel The Size of a Mustard Seed by Maryam “Umm Juwayriyah” Sullivan was published.^[8] Feeling the absence of stories like her own, Sullivan created her novel as a natural evolution of urban fiction, portraying the lives of multi-generational, inner-city American Muslims of various and blended backgrounds. In 2010, Rahiem Brooks released Laugh Now, and followed up in 2011 with the sequel Die Later and his mystery novel, Con Test: Double Life. Rahiem Brooks is noted for creating the Urban Literary Awards (http://www.urbanliteraryawards.com), which is uniquely broadcasts on Blog Talk Radio with live presenters and award acceptances.

In less than a decade, urban fiction has experienced a renaissance that boasts hundreds of titles. The newest wave of street fiction is urban Latino fiction novels such as Devil's Mambo by Jerry Rodriguez, Chained by Deborah Cardona (a.k.a. Sexy) and Jeff Rivera's Forever My Lady.

There is also an unexpected literary wave to hip-hop fiction and street lit, which was sparked by Sister Souljah. Authors with a book or books in this offering include Sofia Quintero of the Black Artemis Novels; E-Fierce, also known as Elisha Miranda; Heru Ptah; Ferentz Lafargue; Saul Williams; Abiola Abrams; Felicia Pride; Marcella Runell Hall; and Martha Diaz. These are hip hop lit or street lit books that take a more literary approach using metaphor, signifying and other literary devices. These books may also be used in socially redeeming or classroom capacities, while maintaining love and positivity for the music and the hip hop culture.

With this new wave of renaissance street lit comes a whole new ballgame when it comes to promotion and exposure. Aside from hand-to-hand sales, which seems to work best in a genre where word-of-mouth has proven to be worth more than any large ad campaign, the Internet has increased the authors and publishers the ability to reach out to the genre's readers. With Internet savvy, many self-published authors who once had no shot of recognition are now household names, such as author Rasheed Clark, who went from relatively unknown, to being honored with fourteen Infini Literary Award nominations for his first two novels, Stories I Wouldn't Tell Nobody But God and Cold Summer Afternoon, both of which became instant bestsellers and proved that Clark was a fresh voice in African American fiction.^{[citation needed]}

From online book groups and Web sites such as StreetLiterature.com, QBR, RawSistaz, Urban Reviews, and Coast 2 Coast Readers to e-zines such as The Urban Book Source, Internet sites geared toward Urban readers are making themselves felt and can often make the difference between a bestseller and a book that does not receive adequate readership.

Authors in this genre such as K'wan Foye, Nikki Turner, Kole Black, and Relentless Aaron are known for bringing street teams and other musical promotion efforts to the book scene. In recent years, these authors have joined with hip hop artists such as 50 Cent to further promote the genre by penning the musicians' real-life stories. In 2010, the hip hop music label, Cash Money Records, established a publishing branch to their brand, Cash Money Content. Cash Money Content has recruited the best street lit authors in the game, Wahida Clark, husband and wife team Ashley and JaQuavis Coleman, K'wan Foye and Treasure E. Blue and is actively publishing and promoting street lit novels as well as working to move some of the stories to the movie screen.

Early criticism of street lit was that books were badly edited due to lack of copy editing by independent publishers. However, in recent years the mainstream publishing industry recognized the genre's potential and signed many of street lit authors to contracts, thus producing better packaged product. One such author was Treasure E. Blue, according to Kirkus Reviews Magazine, a self-published sensation--it has reportedly sold 65,000 copies before getting signed to a major six-figure deal with Random House Publishing.

Authors of Contemporary Urban Fiction[link]

• Relentless Aaron
• Takerra Allen
• T. N. Baker
• J.M. Benjamin
• Treasure E. Blue
• Rahiem Brooks
• Tracy Brown
• Deborah Cardona
• Jordan Charles
• Chunichi
• Rasheed Clark
• Wahida Clark
• Ashley Coleman
• JaQuavis Coleman
• Keisha Ervin
• Nina Foxx
• Treasure Hernandez
• Erick S. Gray
• Shannon Holmes
• La Jill Hunt
• Jihad
• Antonne M. Jones
• Solomon Jones
• Deja King
• K'wan
• Darien Lee
• Thomas Long
• Victor L. Martin
• Miasha
• Eric Pete
• Daaimah S. Poole
• Sofia Quintero, aka Black Artemis
• Sapphire
• Sister Souljah
• T. Styles
• Vickie Stringer
• Kwame "Dutch" Teague
• Nikki Turner
• Nathan Welch
• Silk White
• KaShamba Williams
• Eyone Williams
• Teri Woods

Urban Publishing Companies[link]

Currently four major Urban Literature publishing companies are recognized and although Urban Literature publishing companies exist, they are not the only publishers of Urban Literature. Over the last ten years, larger publishing companies have created imprints, such as Strebor Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

Good2go Publishing[link]

Good2go Publishing began in 2005. Co-owner author Silk White. Books published by Good2go Publishing "Married To Da Streets" by Silk White, "Tears of a Hustler, Tears of a Hustler PT 2, Tears of a Hustler PT 3 by Silk White", "The Teflon Queen by Silk White"

Prodigy Publishing Group[link]

Prodigy Publishing Group (http://www.prodigypublishinggroup.com) was founded by author Rahiem Brooks in late 2009. Books published by Prodigy Publishing Group include "Laugh Now, "Die Later", and Con Test by Rahiem Brooks, and Coming of Age by Jibrail Jones. The publishing house is also noted for creating the first-ever blog radio hosted awards: Urban Literary Awards (http://www.urbanliteraryawards.com).

Q-Boro Books[link]

Q-Boro Books, which is stationed out of Queens, New York was launched in 2004 by Mark Anthony. Since its started as an imprint of Urban Books, Q-Boro Books has grown to compete with some of the top Urban Literature publishers in the country including Urban Books and Triple Crown Publications. Books published by Q-Boro Books include The Last Chance by Darrien Lee, King of Spades by Kiniesha Gayle, Drama in the Church by Dynah Zale, Obsession 101 by Michelle McGriff and My Skin is my Sin by Dejon.

Teri Woods Publishing[link]

Teri Woods Publishing was founded by author Teri Woods in the late 1990s. Books published by Teri Woods Publishing include True 2 the Game by Teri Woods, The Dutch Trilogy by Teri Woods, Deadly Reigns by Teri Woods, Triangle of Sins and its sequel "Rectangle of Sins" by Nurit Folkes and B-More Careful by Shannon Holmes.

Triple Crown Publications[link]

Triple Crown Publications began in 2001 with the debut novel Let That Be The Reason by Vicki Stringer. Books published by TCP include Let That Be The Reason by Vicki Stringer, Dime Piece by Tracy Brown, Sheisty by T.N. Baker, Flipside of the Game by Tu-Shonda Whitaker, Cut Throat by K. Roland Williams, The Guilty Saga by Evilyn Rose, and A Hustler’s Wife by Nikki Turner.

Urban Books[link]

Urban Books was founded in 2002 by author Carl Webber. The company slogan is "Urban Books: Where Drama Meets the Streets". Books published by Urban Books include A Gangster’s Girl by Chunichi, Street Life by Jihad, Around The Way Girls Series, Girls from the Hood Series and Drama Queen by LaJill Hunt.

Urban Literature[link]

The company Urban Literature was founded in 1996 by Joseph A. Wilkerson III and Edward Fullwood while students at North Carolina A&T State University. Originally a t-shirt company, Urban Literature has gone on to produced North Carolina's first urban-themed film festival (the Urban Literary Film Festival), a magazine called Urban Literature, as well as various Hiphop events. {{citationneeded Their slogan is "The Next Level of Creativity".

DC Bookdiva Publications[link]

Founded by T. Short in 2005, DC Bookdiva started as a book promoter and vendor and grew the company into a boutique publishing company. DC Bookdiva Publicaiton is home to authors Nathan Welch, Kwame "Dutch" Teague, Darrell Debrew, Eyone Williams, RJ Champ, and many more.

References[link]

Research Articles[link]

• Morris, V. I. (2011). The Street Lit Author and the Inner-City Teen. Journal of Young Adult Library Service 10(1), 21-24.
• Morris, V.I. (2010). Street Lit: Before you recommend it, you have to understand it. In Urban Teens in the Library: Research and Practice. (pp. 53-66). Chicago: American Library Association.
• Brooks, W. & Savage, L. (2009). Critiques and Controversies of Street Literature: A Formidable Genre. The ALAN Review, 37(3), 48-55.
• Hill, M.L., Perez, B., & Irby, D. (2008). Street fiction: What is it and what does it mean for English teachers ? English Journal, 97(3), 76-81.
• Morris, V. I., Hughes-Hassell, S., Agosto, D. E., & Cottman, D. T. (2006). Street Lit: Flying off teen fiction bookshelves in Philadelphia public libraries. Young Adult Library Services, 5(1), 16-23.

Books[link]

• Morris, Vanessa Irvin (2011). The Readers' Advisory Guide to Street Literature. American Library Association. ISBN 0838911102.
• Honig, Megan (2010). Urban Grit: A Guide to Street Lit. Libraries Unlimited. ISBN 159158857X.
• Ratner, Andrew. (2009). Street Lit: Teaching and Reading Fiction in Urban Schools. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0073378437.

External links[link]

• Lit Up: Keisha Ervin's gritty tales of the St. Louis streets have made her one of the nation's hottest purveyors of urban fiction Riverfront Times. April 2009.
• Readers Embrace 'Ghetto Lit' Genre, National Public Radio Morning Edition, January 20, 2004.
• Publishing Company Called Out over 'Ghetto Lit', National Public Radio All Things Considered, October 12, 2007.
• New literary genre emerging from underground authors, San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2003.
• Nick Chiles: Don't call this smut 'literature', Dallas News, January 8, 2006.
• StreetFiction.org: An Urban Fiction Review Web Site
• Street Literature: Poundin' the Pavement to Bring You The Word On Street Lit, blog site by Vanessa Irvin Morris.

Reading lists[link]

Because this genre is very popular with urban teenagers, the following reading lists should prove to be helpful for teachers and librarians.

• Resources for Street Lit: Books, Blogs, & Lists by Vanessa Irvin Morris, Drexel Univ., Phila, PA
• SpeakEasy: Articles About and/or Related to Street Lit by Vanessa Irvin Morris, Drexel Univ., Phila, PA
• Urban/Street Fiction Title/Author List by Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library
• African American Book Club Urban/Street Fiction List
• Crazy Quilts Blog with Urban Lit for School Library Collections by Edith Campbell, Arlington High School, Indianapolis, IN
• Library Journal. [5]

This article is about the character from the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the resulting epithet. For the P. G. Wodehouse character, see Tom Travers.

A 1901 stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin containing mixed elements of Harriet Beecher Stowe's original Christian martyr and the stock minstrel character of later adaptations.

Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The phrase "Uncle Tom" has also become an epithet for a person who is slavish and excessively subservient to perceived authority figures, particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people; or any person perceived to be a participant in the oppression of their own group.^[1][2]

Original characterization and critical evaluations[link]

Detail of an illustration from the first book edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Depicts Uncle Tom as young and muscular

At the time of the novel's initial publication in 1851 Uncle Tom was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of minstrel shows; Stowe's melodramatic story humanized the suffering of slavery for White audiences by portraying Tom as a Christlike figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master because Tom refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who escape from slavery.^[3][4] Stowe reversed the gender conventions of slave narratives by juxtaposing Uncle Tom's passivity against the daring of three African American women who escape from slavery.^[3]

The novel was both influential and commercially successful, published as a serial from 1851-1852 and as a book from 1852 onward.^[3][4] An estimated 500,000 copies had sold worldwide by 1853, including unauthorized reprints.^[5] Senator Charles Sumner credited Uncle Tom's Cabin for the election of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln himself reportedly quipped that Stowe had triggered the American Civil War.^[3] Frederick Douglass praised the novel as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery".^[3] Despite Douglass's enthusiasm, an anonymous 1852 reviewer for William Lloyd Garrison's publication The Liberator suspected a racial double standard in the idealization of Uncle Tom:

Uncle Tom’s character is sketched with great power and rare religious perception. It triumphantly exemplifies the nature, tendency, and results of CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE. We are curious to know whether Mrs. Stowe is a believer in the duty of non-resistance for the White man, under all possible outrage and peril, as for the Black man… [For whites in parallel circumstances, it is often said] Talk not of overcoming evil with good—it is madness! Talk not of peacefully submitting to chains and stripes—it is base servility! Talk not of servants being obedient to their masters—let the blood of tyrants flow! How is this to be explained or reconciled? Is there one law of submission and non-resistance for the Black man, and another of rebellion and conflict for the white man? When it is the whites who are trodden in the dust, does Christ justify them in taking up arms to vindicate their rights? And when it is the blacks who are thus treated, does Christ require them to be patient, harmless, long-suffering, and forgiving? Are there two Christs?^[6]

James Weldon Johnson, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, expresses an ambivalent opinion in his autobiography:

For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he; the proof of which is that they knowingly stayed and worked on the plantations that furnished sinews for the army which was fighting to keep them enslaved.”^[7]

In 1949 American writer James Baldwin rejected the emasculation of the title character "robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex" as the price of spiritual salvation for a dark-skinned man in a fiction whose African-American characters, in Baldwin's view, were invariably two dimensional stereotypes.^[3][8] To Baldwin, Stowe was closer to a pamphleteer than a novelist and her artistic vision was fatally marred by polemics and racism that manifested especially in her handling of the title character.^[8] Stowe had stated that her sons had wept when she first read them the scene of Uncle Tom's death, but after Baldwin's essay it ceased being respectable to accept the melodrama of the Uncle Tom story.^[3] Uncle Tom became what critic Linda Williams describes as "an epithet of servility" and the novel's reputation plummeted until feminist critics led by Jane Tompkins reassessed the tale's female characters.^[3] According to Debra J. Rosenthal in an introduction to a collection of critical appraisals for the Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, overall reactions have been mixed with some critics praising the novel for affirming the humanity of the African American characters and for the risks Stowe assumed in taking a very public stand against slavery before abolitionism had become a socially acceptable cause, and others criticizing the very limited terms upon which those characters' humanity was affirmed and the artistic shortcomings of political melodrama.^[9]

Inspiration[link]

A specific impetus for the novel was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which imposed heavy fines upon law enforcement personnel in Northern states if they refused to assist the return of people who escaped from slavery.^[4][10] The new law also stripped African Americans of the right to request a jury trial or to testify on their own behalf, even if they were legally free, whenever a single claimant presented a sworn affidavit of ownership.^[10] The same law authorized a $1000 fine and six months imprisonment for anyone who knowingly harbored or assisted a fugitive slave.^[10] These terms infuriated Stowe, so the novel was written, read, and debated as a political abolitionist tract.^[4]

Stowe drew inspiration for the Uncle Tom character from several sources. The best-known of these was Josiah Henson, whose autobiography was originally published in 1849 and later republished in extensively revised editions after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.^[11] Henson was enslaved at birth in 1789.^[11] He became a Christian at age eighteen and took up preaching.^[11] Henson attempted to purchase his freedom for $450, but after selling his personal assets to raise $350 and signing a promissory note for the remainder Henson's owner raised the price to $1000; Henson was unable to prove that the original agreement had been for a lesser amount.^[11] Shortly afterward Henson was ordered on a trip south to New Orleans, and when he learned that he was to be sold there he obtained a weapon and contemplated murdering his white companions, but decided against violence because his Christian morals forbade it.^[11] A sudden illness in one of his companions forced their return to Kentucky, and shortly afterward Henson escaped north with his family, settling in Canada where he became a civic leader.^[11]

Stowe read the first edition of Henson's narrative and later confirmed that she had incorporated elements from it into Uncle Tom's Cabin.^[11] Kentucky and New Orleans figure in both Henson's narrative and the novel's settings, and some other story elements are similar.^[11]

In the public imagination, however, Henson became synonymous with Uncle Tom.^[11] After Stowe's death her son and grandson claimed she and Henson had met before Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, but the chronology does not hold up to scrutiny and she probably drew material only from his published autobiography.^[11]

Epithet[link]

Uncle Tom, from an 1885 magic lantern series.

The term "Uncle Tom" is used as a derogatory epithet for an excessively subservient person, particularly when that person perceives their own lower-class status based on race. It is similarly used to negatively describe a person who betrays their own group by participating in its oppression, whether or not they do so willingly.^[12][13]

The popular negative connotation of "Uncle Tom" has largely been attributed to numerous derivative works inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin in the decade after its release, rather than the original novel itself, whose title character is a more positive figure.^[3] These works lampooned and distorted the portrayal of Uncle Tom with politically loaded overtones.^[5]

History[link]

American copyright law before 1856 did not give novel authors any control over derivative stage adaptations, so Stowe neither approved the adaptations nor profited from them.^[14] Minstrel show retellings in particular, usually performed by white men in blackface, tended to be derisive and pro-slavery, transforming Uncle Tom from Christian martyr to a fool or an apologist for slavery.^[5]

Adapted theatrical performances of the novel remained in continual production in the United States for at least eighty years.^[14] These representations had a lasting cultural impact and influenced the pejorative nature of the term Uncle Tom in later popular use.^[5]

Although not all minstrel depictions of Uncle Tom were negative, the dominant version developed into a stock character very different from Stowe's hero.^[5][15] Stowe's Uncle Tom was a muscular and virile man who refused to obey when ordered to beat other slaves; the stock character of minstrel shows became a shuffling asexual individual with a receding hairline and graying hair.^[15] To Jo-Ann Morgan, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture, these shifting representations undermined the subversive layers of Stowe's original characterization by redefining Uncle Tom until he fit within prevailing racist norms.^[14] Particularly after the Civil War, as the political thrust of the novel which had arguably helped to precipitate that war became obsolete to actual political discourse, popular depictions of the title character recast him within the apologetics of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.^[14] The virile father of the abolitionist serial and first book edition degenerated into a decrepit old man, and with that transformation the character lost the capacity for resistance that had originally given meaning to his choices.^[14][15] Stowe never meant Uncle Tom to be a derided name, but the term as a pejorative has developed based on how later versions of the character, stripped of his strength, were depicted on stage.^[16]

Claire Parfait, author of The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852-2002, opines that "the many alterations in retellings of the Uncle Tom story demonstrate an impulse to correct the retellers' perceptions of its flaws and "the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication."^[4]

See also[link]

• Acting white
• House Negro
• Jump Jim Crow
• List of ethnic slurs
• Tom Shows
• Uncle Tom syndrome

References[link]

Notes[link]

• Osofsky, Gilbert, ed. (1969). Puttin' On Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-131432-2. 
• Mohammad Ali (2009). Thrilla in Manilla (Documentary). USA: HBO. 

External links[link]

• An article on the Uncle Tom caricature
• An article from EveryGirls 1931 by Olive Burns Kirby

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