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Re: More on Humor and More on Multicultural Literature
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From: Uma <uma_at_gobrainstorm.net>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:34:14 -0700
Lyn it seems to me that one point you're making is to consider the locus of the humor in a work. Where is the humor aimed? If it's aimed at the character, for the sake of reader laughs, then it's going to fall flat or even be hurtful to readers who share some defining characteristic (ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, whatever) with the character. Funny isn't laudable all by itself, and humor is a tool like any other in the array of tools at writers' disposal.
We've talked briefly about Sherman Alexie. One of the reasons I think he's such a brilliant writer is that he has a masterly sense of audience, as anyone knows who has heard him speak. I heard him talk to 300-odd people in Durango, Colorado, several years ago. The audience was almost a third Native American, a mix of people with Southern Ute, Dine (Navajo) and assorted other tribal heritage, and 2/3 Anglo (yup, that's the term in the southwest, with its own issues, admittedly) and random others (like me). He played that audience like an instrument, it was just a joy to behold. When it came to Q&A time, he kept going, wouldn't stop. It was as if he was waiting for the right question. When it came (How does your family feel about your books?) he reached triumphantly for his cell phone, called his mom, and put her on. It was the perfect ending, and the audience was enthralled.
When I read his work I can feel that same sense of a complex voice speaking to all kinds of readers, but with something in there for the kids on reservations and in scattered American Indian communities, for whom he cares deeply A couple of weeks after the Durango talk, I heard him again at NCTE. It was a very different Alexie--he was still skewering the audience, himself, publishers, and so on, but the jokes were different, the sensibility was different, the positioning of himself vis a vis the audience was different. That's what it takes to write humor successfully--a finely tuned sense of who the joke's about, who it's being told to, and why.
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami Writer, Author of Children's Books http://www.umakrishnaswami.com Faculty Chair, MFA-Writing for Children & Young Adults, Vermont College of Fine Arts
Received on Thu 21 Feb 2013 11:34:14 AM CST
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:34:14 -0700
Lyn it seems to me that one point you're making is to consider the locus of the humor in a work. Where is the humor aimed? If it's aimed at the character, for the sake of reader laughs, then it's going to fall flat or even be hurtful to readers who share some defining characteristic (ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, whatever) with the character. Funny isn't laudable all by itself, and humor is a tool like any other in the array of tools at writers' disposal.
We've talked briefly about Sherman Alexie. One of the reasons I think he's such a brilliant writer is that he has a masterly sense of audience, as anyone knows who has heard him speak. I heard him talk to 300-odd people in Durango, Colorado, several years ago. The audience was almost a third Native American, a mix of people with Southern Ute, Dine (Navajo) and assorted other tribal heritage, and 2/3 Anglo (yup, that's the term in the southwest, with its own issues, admittedly) and random others (like me). He played that audience like an instrument, it was just a joy to behold. When it came to Q&A time, he kept going, wouldn't stop. It was as if he was waiting for the right question. When it came (How does your family feel about your books?) he reached triumphantly for his cell phone, called his mom, and put her on. It was the perfect ending, and the audience was enthralled.
When I read his work I can feel that same sense of a complex voice speaking to all kinds of readers, but with something in there for the kids on reservations and in scattered American Indian communities, for whom he cares deeply A couple of weeks after the Durango talk, I heard him again at NCTE. It was a very different Alexie--he was still skewering the audience, himself, publishers, and so on, but the jokes were different, the sensibility was different, the positioning of himself vis a vis the audience was different. That's what it takes to write humor successfully--a finely tuned sense of who the joke's about, who it's being told to, and why.
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami Writer, Author of Children's Books http://www.umakrishnaswami.com Faculty Chair, MFA-Writing for Children & Young Adults, Vermont College of Fine Arts
Received on Thu 21 Feb 2013 11:34:14 AM CST
