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How to be black
Have you ever been called \"too black\" or \"not black enough\"? Have you ever befriended or worked with a black person? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this book is for you. Raised by a pro-black, Pan-Afrikan single mother during the crack years of 1980s Washington, DC, and educated at Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University, Baratunde Thurston has over thirty years' experience being black. Now, through stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other revelatory black details, he shares with readers of all colors his wisdom and expertise in how to be black. Beyond memoir, this guidebook offers practical advice on everything from \"How to Be The Black Friend\" to \"How to Be The (Next) Black President\" to \"How to Celebrate Black History Month.\" To provide additional perspective, Baratunde assembled an award-winning Black Panel--three black women, three black men, and one white man (Christian Lander of Stuff White People Like)--and asked them such revealing questions as: \"When Did You First Realize You Were Black?\" \"\"How Black Are You?\" \"Can You Swim?\" The result is a humorous, intelligent, and audacious guide that challenges and satirizes the so-called experts, purists, and racists who purport to speak for all black people. With honest storytelling and biting wit, Baratunde plots a path not just to blackness, but one open to anyone interested in simply \"how to be.\"
Book
Rolling
Since slavery, African and African American humor has baffled,
intrigued, angered, and entertained the masses.
Rolling centers Blackness in comedy, especially on
television, and observing that it is often relegated to biopics,
slave narratives, and the comedic. But like W. E. B. DuBois's ideas
about double consciousness and Racquel Gates's extension of his
theories, we know that Blackness resonates for Black viewers in
ways often entirely different than for white viewers. Contributors
to this volume cover a range of cases representing African American
humor across film, television, digital media, and stand-up as Black
comic personas try to work within, outside, and around culture,
tilling for content. Essays engage with the complex industrial
interplay of Blackness, white audiences, and comedy; satire and
humor on media platforms; and the production of Blackness within
comedy through personal stories and interviews of Black production
crew and writers for television comedy.
Rolling illuminates the inner workings of Blackness and
comedy in media discourse.
eBook
Newslore
Newslore is folklore that comments on and hinges on knowledge of current events. These expressions come in many forms: jokes, urban legends, digitally altered photographs, mock news stories, press releases or interoffice memoranda, parodies of songs, poems, political and commercial advertisements, movie previews and posters, still or animated cartoons, and short live-action films.
InNewslore: Folklore on the Internet and in the News, author Russell Frank offers a snapshot of the items of newslore disseminated via the Internet that gained the widest currency around the turn of the millennium. Among the newsmakers lampooned in e-mails and on the Web were Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and such media celebrities as Princess Diana and Michael Jackson. The book also looks at the folk response to the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.
Frank analyzes this material by tracing each item back to the news story it refers to in search of clues as to what, exactly, the item reveals about the public's response. His argument throughout is that newslore is an extremely useful and revelatory gauge for public reaction to current events and an invaluable screen capture of the latest zeitgeist.
eBook
The Comedy of Survivance in James Welch's Fools Crow
Fools Crow (1986), by James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre), may seem an unlikely site of humor given that it is concerned with the tragic history of the Pikuni band of Montana Blackfeet in the nineteenth century. However, Welch foregrounds Native humor traditions central to the Blackfeet culture. This article analyzes the ways humor punctuates the narrative, taking the form of teasing sexual humor—familiar as adolescent discourse—and corrective humor that is intended to guide individuals to find their identities within the community. In highlighting Native belief systems that rely on mythical/mystical figures such as the trickster Raven, the novel is both a form of bildungsroman and an alternate history, which, although often tragic, never loses sight of the restorative aspect of humor in the quest for survival and a new future.
Journal Article
Indigenous Humor in Thomas King's The Back of the Turtle: An Ecocritical Perspective
Although environmental catastrophe seems an unlikely topic for humor, Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang established the precedent for this incongruity in 1975. Thomas King's The Back of the Turtle (2012) follows Abbey's postmodern lead. However, this articles argues that King deploys a more comprehensive and diverse strategy of humor, ingeniously synthesizing the tragic and the comic to call attention to the perils of environmental degradation. A central element in his strategy is his infusing his narrative with Indigenous markers—creation stories, Native motifs, and reinterpretations of Indigenous-white relations—that he uses in a scathingly humorous way to carry forward the storytelling style of his earlier works.
Journal Article
Icons of African American Comedy
This in-depth compilation of the lives, works, and contributions of 12 icons of African-American comedy explores their impact on American entertainment and the way America thinks about race. Despite the popularity of comedic superstars like Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg, few books have looked at the work of African-American comedians, especially those who, like Godfrey Cambridge and Moms Mabley, dramatically impacted American humor. Icons of African American Comedy remedies that oversight. Beginning with an introduction that explores the history and impact of black comedians, the book offers in-depth discussions of 12 of the most important African-American comedians of the past 100-plus years: Bert Williams, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Flip Wilson, Godfrey Cambridge, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, Damon Wayans, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle. Each essay discusses the comedian's early life and offers an analysis of his or her contributions to American entertainment. Providing a variety of viewpoints on African-American comedy, the book shows how these comedians changed American comedy and American society.
eBook