Books by Emily Ruth Rutter

A critical analysis of the poetic representations and legacies of five landmark blue artists. The Blues Muse focuses on Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, and Lead Belly, and traces the ways in which these artists and their personas have been invoked and developed throughout American poetry.

From the pioneering Cuban Giants (1885-1915) to the Negro Leagues (1920-1960), black baseball was a long-standing staple of African American communities. While many of its artifacts and statistics are lost, black baseball figured vibrantly in films, novels, plays, and poems. In Invisible Ball of Dreams, Emily Ruth Rutter examines wide-ranging representations of this history.