The Buck, the Black and the Existential Hero (Northwestern University Press, 2020) combines philosophy, literary theory, and jazz studies with Africana studies to develop a theory of the black male literary imagination. In doing so, it seeks to answer fundamental aesthetic and existential questions: How does the experience of being black and male in the modern West affect the telling of a narrative, the shape or structure of a novel, the development of characters and plot lines, and the nature of criticism itself?