African American Humor

African American Humor PDF Author: Mel Watkins
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN:
Category : African American proverbs
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of anecdotes, tales, jokes, toasts, rhymes, satire, riffs, poems, stand-up sketches, and snaps documents the evolution of African American humor over the past two centuries. It includes routines and writings from such luminaries as Bert Williams, Butterbeans & Susie, Stepin Fetchit, Moms Mabley, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Redd Foxx, Ishmael Reed, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence, and Chris Rock. This anthology includes classic stage routines, literary examples, and witty quotations presented in their entirety.

African American Humor

African American Humor PDF Author: Mel Watkins
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN:
Category : African American proverbs
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of anecdotes, tales, jokes, toasts, rhymes, satire, riffs, poems, stand-up sketches, and snaps documents the evolution of African American humor over the past two centuries. It includes routines and writings from such luminaries as Bert Williams, Butterbeans & Susie, Stepin Fetchit, Moms Mabley, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Redd Foxx, Ishmael Reed, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence, and Chris Rock. This anthology includes classic stage routines, literary examples, and witty quotations presented in their entirety.

On the Real Side

On the Real Side PDF Author: Mel Watkins
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1569767602
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 638

Get Book Here

Book Description
This comprehensive history of black humor sets it in the context of American popular culture. Blackface minstrelsy, Stepin Fetchit, and the Amos 'n' Andy show presented a distorted picture of African Americans; this book contrasts this image with the authentic underground humor of African Americans found in folktales, race records, and all-black shows and films. After generations of stereotypes, the underground humor finally emerged before the American public with Richard Pryor in the 1970s. But Pryor was not the first popular comic to present authentically black humor. Watkins offers surprising reassessments of such seminal figures as Fetchit, Bert Williams, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx, looking at how they paved the way for contemporary comics such as Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, and Bill Cosby.

African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy

African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy PDF Author: Robin R. Means Coleman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815331254
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Providing new insight into key debates over race and representation in the media, this ethnographic study explores the ways in which African Americans have been depicted in Black situation comedies-from 1950's Beulah to contemporary series like Martin and Living Single.

Honey, Hush!

Honey, Hush! PDF Author: Nikki Giovanni
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318180
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 724

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this "dazzling anthology" (Publishers Weekly), Daryl Cumber Dance has collected the often hard-hitting, sometimes risqué, always dramatic humor that arises from the depth of black women's souls and the breadth of their lives. The eloquent wit and laughter of African American women are presented here in all their written and spoken manifestations: autobiographies, novels, essays, poems, speeches, comic routines, proverbial sayings, cartoons, mimeographed sheets, and folk tales. The chapters proceed thematically, covering the church, love, civil rights, motherly advice, and much more.

African American Humor, Irony and Satire

African American Humor, Irony and Satire PDF Author: Dana A. Williams
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443806560
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
African American Humor, Irony, and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking includes select proceedings from the annual Heart’s Day Conference, sponsored by the Department of English at Howard University. Among the collection’s many strengths is the range of essays included here. Essays on Ishmael Reed center the collection, and satirists from George Schuyler to Aaron McGruder are examined as are popular culture comedians Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle. Thus, the collection adds broadly to the body of scholarship on traditional and non-traditional interpretations of humor, irony, and satire. What these essays also reveal is how the lens of humor, irony, and satire as a way of reading texts is especially useful in highlighting the complexity of African American life and culture. The essays also uncover crucial but no so obvious connections between African Americans and other world cultures.

Black Comedians on Black Comedy

Black Comedians on Black Comedy PDF Author: Darryl Littleton
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557837301
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description
(Applause Books). Black Comedians on Black Comedy is the only up-to-date book to examine African-American humor. Comedian Darryl Littleton traces the history and evolution of "black comedy" in his narrative and through the 125 interviews he conducted with some of the top African-American comedians in the world. Those interviewed include Dick Gregory, Sinbad, Eddie Murphy, Mike Epps, Cedric the Entertainer, Nick Cannon, Bernie Mac, Eddie Griffin, Damon Wayans, Arsenio Hall, Chris Rock, Marla Gibbs, Robert Townsend, and John Witherspoon.

Hokum

Hokum PDF Author: Paul Beatty
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596917164
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book Here

Book Description
Edited by the author of The Sellout, winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hokum is a liberating, eccentric, savagely comic anthology of the funniest writing by black Americans. This book is less a comprehensive collection than it is a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted friend-a sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed with the blues, hip-hop, political speeches, and the world's funniest radio sermon. The subtle musings of Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, and Harryette Mullen are bracketed by the profane and often loud ruminations of Langston Hughes, Darius James, Wanda Coleman, Tish Benson, Steve Cannon, and Hattie Gossett. Some of the funniest writers don't write, so included are selections from well-known yet unpublished wits Lightnin' Hopkins, Mike Tyson, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Selections also come from public figures and authors whose humor, although incisive and profound, is often overlooked: Malcolm X, Suzan-Lori Parks, Zora Neale Hurston, Sojourner Truth, and W.E.B. Dubois. Groundbreaking, fierce, and hilarious, this is a necessary anthology for any fan or student of American writing, with a huge range and a smart, political grasp of the uses of humor.

Laughing Fit to Kill

Laughing Fit to Kill PDF Author: Glenda Carpio
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199719543
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reassessing the meanings of "black humor" and "dark satire," Laughing Fit to Kill illustrates how black comedians, writers, and artists have deftly deployed various modes of comedic "conjuring"--the absurd, the grotesque, and the strategic expression of racial stereotypes--to redress not only the past injustices of slavery and racism in America but also their legacy in the present. Focusing on representations of slavery in the post-civil rights era, Carpio explores stereotypes in Richard Pryor's groundbreaking stand-up act and the outrageous comedy of Chappelle's Show to demonstrate how deeply indebted they are to the sly social criticism embedded in the profoundly ironic nineteenth-century fiction of William Wells Brown and Charles W. Chesnutt. Similarly, she reveals how the iconoclastic literary works of Ishmael Reed and Suzan-Lori Parks use satire, hyperbole, and burlesque humor to represent a violent history and to take on issues of racial injustice. With an abundance of illustrations, Carpio also extends her discussion of radical black comedy to the visual arts as she reveals how the use of subversive appropriation by Kara Walker and Robert Colescott cleverly lampoons the iconography of slavery. Ultimately, Laughing Fit to Kill offers a unique look at the bold, complex, and just plain funny ways that African American artists have used laughter to critique slavery's dark legacy.

Rebellious Laughter

Rebellious Laughter PDF Author: Joseph Boskin
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815627470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Rebellious Laughter changes the way we think about the ordinary joke. Claiming that humor in America is a primary cultural weapon, Boskin surveys the multitude of joke cycles that have swept the country during the last fifty years. Dumb Blonde jokes. Elephant jokes. Jewish-American Princess jokes. Lightbulb jokes. Readers will enjoy humor from many diverse sources: whites, blacks, women, and Hispanics; conservatives and liberals; public workers and university students; the powerless and power brokers. Boskin argues that jokes provide a cultural barometer of concerns and anxieties, frequently appearing in our day-to-day language long before these issues become grist for stand-up comics.

African American Satire

African American Satire PDF Author: Darryl Dickson-Carr
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826263747
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Satire's real purpose as a literary genre is to criticize through humor, irony, caricature, and parody, and ultimately to defy the status quo. In African American Satire, Darryl Dickson-Carr provides the first book-length study of African-American satire and the vital role it has played. In the process he investigates African American literature, American literature, and the history of satire." --Book Jacket.