Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld illuminates a neglected history of American crime, identity, and politics in the 20th century. This is the extraordinary true story of a man who went from career thief to prison journalist to Eastern Shawnee activist. BlueJacket has been featured in Los Angeles Review of Books, Tulsa World, Weird History, Bustle, Crime Reads, This Land Press, and Public Radio Tulsa/NPR. The book was nominated for best non-fiction work for the 30th annual Oklahoma Book Awards.
The author, Michael P. Daley, will talk about the book with OSU American Studies professor, David Gray, followed by a Q & A. Please join us.
Praise for Bobby BlueJacket:
“Insightful, angry, straightforward, reminiscent of the subterranean classic You Can’t Win by Jack Black—Daley’s BlueJacket pulls no punches describing a long life as fascinating as it is heartbreaking in its details.”
—Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence and Elvissey
“It’s a compelling read, full of violence and heart.”
—Joshua Kline, This Land Press
“This book is not only a fascinating and richly detailed biography of a wily child of the Great Depression who at an early age drifted into a life of serious crime and serious punishment, it is also an intimate portrait of his complex emotional and intellectual life. Bobby BlueJacket. The story is as good as the sound of his beautiful name.”
—Ron Padgett, Bean Spasms and Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers
“Brilliant book... [BlueJacket] is quoted extensively throughout as he was at times eloquent, always appeared to be honest, wrote for prison papers, clearly read a great deal, but was a voice of mystery who raised philosophical questions inadvertantly... a book of history that suggests that in the right hands anyone could be plucked from the crowd and in the proper hands and mind written into an iconic figure in a wide-ranging book of history and sociology, and, inevitably psychology.”
—Rick Harsch, The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas
“[A] rarity in literature—a history told by the defeated, but still unvanquished. As such, Daley has created an engrossing and unique story that will compel your attention from beginning to end.”
—Bryan Zepp Jamieson, Electric Review
“An amazing cultural history as much as it is a story of Bobby BlueJacket.”
—Rich Fisher, Public Radio Tulsa
“Each time I picked up Bobby BlueJacket, I got lost in its pages, even at the points where I was utterly horrified by what I read… I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone, not only because it is fascinating, well-written, and incredibly well-researched, but because it provides layer upon layer of indispensable information told primarily through a first-person account of lived experiences. It’s the kind of narrative history we need more of, especially centering marginalized voices, especially today.”
—Samantha Puc, In Full Bleed
Download this event
