Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me is considered one of the great, classic collections of African-American literature and folklore. Originally published by in 1974 in hardcover only, it quickly gained the reputation as a classic collection of Black folk poetry known as "toasts." Toasts are probably the only living form of oral narrative poetry in the U.S.; they represent a vital genre of black folklore. They come from various sources: from streetcorners to jails, from barrooms to academic halls.
The toasts celebrate mythological figures from African-American culture, including the famed "bad man" Stackolee who is said to have murdered a man over a Stetson hat; the famous exploits of the "Signifying Monkey," who outsmarts his stronger opponents in the forest by using his native wits; and stories of the loss of the Titanic, famed in black folklore because of its symbolic significance as a failure of the era's powerful white establishment-and the (perhaps apocryphal) story that the ship's owner had refused to sell tickets to famed blacks including prize figher Jack Johnson. Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me will delight students of African-American culture and folklore, and anyone who enjoys the double entendres and hidden meanings found in the oral tradition, from its African roots to contemporary rap.