Introduction: A joke to the eye -- (Re)viewing Ellison's Invisible Man: comedy, rage, and cultural tradition in an African-American classic -- Dick Gregory, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx: African-American humor, stand-up comedy, and comic rage in mainstream America -- From absence to flight: comic rage in the black arts/black power movements, 1966-1976 -- Fury in the "promised land": comic rage in George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum and Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle -- Hollywood shuffle and bamboozled: comic rage, black film, and popular culture at the end of the century -- Direct from a never scared bicentennial nigger: comic rage in Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock -- Conclusion: on being pissed off to the highest degree of pissivity.
Summary:
The history of African American humor is difficult to piece together. Occluded by slavery's gaps and distorted by racist stereotypes, African American humor has few extant works prior to the early twentieth century. Tucker's study focuses on comic rage, which he defines as an African American cultural expression that uses oral traditions to convey humor and militancy simultaneously in its confrontation of uncomfortable truths about inequalities and inconsistencies in American culture.
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