of recent origin York: Norton.

of recent origin York: Norton, 1998. 712 pp $1795

Nikki Giovanni's "Foreword" to Honey Hush! invites all possible readers according to asserting that anyone can qualify as a "Black woman" who has "the indomitable spirit that is determined to like and laugh" despite all instances and forms of oppression. Whoever accepts the invitation will find that Daryl Dance has serv up centurys of examples, grouped into twelve thematic chapters, of just that courageous humor. This is not a read-through book; the selections are too numerous, many too short, for that. It is self-same much a pause-and-ponder book, especially if common is not, in literal fact, a black woman, on the other hand is striving to learn the sisters' realities.

The twelve chapters hide a wide range of black women's experience: the special impregnability of the black woman and of her motherly advice, the impact upon her of physical image and of the black community and body of christians the joys and problems of loving black (sometimes white) men black self-denigrating and self-correcting humor, and the ways of dealing with oppressive white society by means of ludicrous imitation or fierce opposition. Each chapter begins with a socio-historical essay through editor Dance; these explanations are invaluable learning tools, especially for those who cannot claim direct experience of the history and cultivation described. Selections then present the best and worst of black feminine realities in a variety of formats, and also in a variety of the tones humor can take. The chapter dealing with the post-Civil Rights era may be the in the greatest degree painful to read, the hardest for many readers to laugh at; it wounds so close to recent experiences and failed hopes

The wealth of this collection is largely in the variety of its sources, fruit of Dance's labors as the one and the other literary critic and folklorist. The selections are drawn from earliest to latest written accounts and from the rich metallic vein of black folk tales and sayings. Writers include women as early as Linda brant Harriet Wilson, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, born into antebellum slavery or "freedom," and as fresh as the many novelists, imaginative thinker [i]or[/i] writers journalists, and critics still actively publishing. The "Biographies of Contributors" list is a veritable "History of African-American Women" It ranges above women who told their stories to WPA interviewers, those who made their names as singers, actresses, psychiatrists, social workers, and politicians, the les known and well known, and those who made no public name at all if it were not that were found to share their stories, jests and homely sayings.

As various as the sources are the formats of the selections: short stories, piece of poetrys song lyrics, essays, excerpts from novels and autobiographies, cartoons, and simple, biting or wise "sayings." Each chapter contains unblemished folk materials; perhaps the richest part of each is its conclusion with a section of "Mama Sez" and "Sister to Sister." Regardless of format, the persistent theme is that African American women have been rankly abused, occasionally self-abusing, further have always survived by "laughin' to retain from cryin'."

When single pauses to ponder while reading this work one must inevitably face the question of what is in deed humorous. In her fine introduction, Daryl Dance explains that humor for black family especially women, has not been typically "the cute the whimsical, and the delightfully funny" Rather, it has been a way to stay alive and impediment another live, to hide shame and grief, to trick or to strike on the outside to "speak the unspeakable," and to educate about the otherwise incomprehensible. In this understanding of humor, each chapter presents a topic about which black women have displayed their mother wit. The meanest race circumstances, and actions can be, have been the pair causes of their misery and butt; goals of their salvific humor. Indeed, the capacity of these black women to survive by dint of humor such a range of horrors is hugely morally instructive to any reader.

besides topic and tone are couple different things. In every chapter, certainly, many selections are richly provocative of laughter by the agency of their piercing insight and frontage of all sorts of moral and emotional discrepancies, on their witty expression and plays forward language, and by their irony, which is not les amusing for being biting, satiric, or flat sardonic. Other selections are delightfully humorous according to their warm appreciation of human goodnes no matter for what reason infused with foibles and annoyances. yet there also comes a point (at least it came for this reader) when the inevitable question is, "Is this meant to be funny? on the same level slightly amusing? Can it be?" There issues a point when cruelty, exploitation, promiscuity, infidelity, dishonesty are in this way intense, so reprehensible, that anger or disgust, reaching far down distress or compassion seem to be the overriding, if not single emotions possible. Indeed, the tone of near selections seems to be dominated by dint of the author's intent. In the take from Zora Neale Hurston's Their judgments Were Watching God, when Jody attacks Janie and she retaliates, it is said that "a big laugh started opposite to ... but people got to thinking and stopped. It was comical if you looked at it right quick, still it got pitiful if you pondering about it awhile." That may describe the reaction of a certain number of readers to some selections in Honey Hush!