So I came across this book while I was thinking about what to recommend to a friend of mine who’s taken to dating black men for the first time. Realizing how insulting such an exercise might be, I decided to re-visit my priorities and just find something funny for myself instead. However, it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve read something non-school affiliates from cover to cover. Then I recalled reading Beatty’s “The Sellout”. Recalling the sharp pains in my sides from reading such an absurdly funny book, I decided to peruse his list of works to see if there was anything particularly funny that might further draw me from the actual work that needed to get done in my life. Enter, “Hokum”. I remembered why Beatty’s work is so meaningful for me. There’s a degree of whimsy (perhaps not intended) with some of his pieces. He takes on the notion of that we, as the descendants of those who survived (at least in body) the cavalcade of horrors that was the Middle Passage and slavery in the new world, must look to our pasts with misty eyes and long for the time when we ruled the world. In the intro to this collection, he takes on the notion that as we read the s of Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, we must fill ourselves to bursting with pride at our abilities to pen such moving pieces. Far be it from me to poo-poo their works. After all, they all make good points. But Beatty makes the larger global point that it’s okay to laugh at ourselves, too. This is especially true for those of us who find ourselves stuck between rising up to the mountain-top and proclaiming a black glory that’s been lost in geographical, racial and hierarchical translation and the forces that would do nothing more than dance on our graves and shit on our memory. Beatty is telling us that, yeah, we’re descended from kings and queens, but those courts had jesters and assholes, too. I applaud the effort and look forward to laughing at how the greats of the past tried to help us further connect to a humanity that’s often ignored as we celebrate our past.6 s Jason52 45

(originally written in 2006)

It pisses me off that there isn't a black correspondent on The Daily Show. If there is a benchmark for contemporary comedy and satire it is Jon Stewart and his cast of faux reporters and their completely satirical counter-part, Stephen Colbert. There are jokes and points that can only be made from people of color. How different would the Daily Show's comedy about Hurricane Katrina had been if they had just one black face in their stable?

Hmmm, maybe not so much. It's not Kenan Thompson and Finesse Mitchell get to do much "black" comedy on SNL (except that one time).

I came into Hokum hoping to find someone I could look at as a kind of black Mark Twain, constantly turning the mirror back on us, the view askew. Showcasing our absurdity through brilliant satire. I'm not sure that person exists in the written word. Dave Chappelle and Paul Mooney probably fit the bill the closest but the writers? Who are these people?

I don't think Beatty finds them in Hokum. There are flashes, sure. Danzy Senna's The Mulatto Millennium is still one of the defining essays from the 90s and is still hilarious. The words of Mike Tyson and Al Sharpton are always absurd but perhaps the problem here is that we can never quite tell if they are in on the joke or not. Sharpton probably is, Tyson probably isn't. Or maybe it's vice-versa.

I think I might find some comfort in knowing that Tyson was constantly winking at the camera while praising allah and hoping to eat another man's offspring.

There's true black brilliance in Trish Benson's Fifth Ward Email which opens:

"Memo to the bitch trying to cause disharmony between me and my husband.

Greetings Ho -"

There's Trey Ellis's Preliminary Scholarship Aptitude Test which, 20 years later, would be prime material for McSweeney's. There are lots of amazing names and some spectacular poetry. And some humor with titles and language that can only be categorized as black. I can't imagine anyone other than a black American asking in verse, "Should Old Shit Be Forgot?"

But Beatty is right, there is not even a black Dave Berry. Maybe Zora Neale Hurston was once, for a time, but today, who shines the light on us? Who sees Black America today and goes "WTF?" and writes about it comedically? Intelligently? Consistently?

And how would we know it was satire?

Hokum is highly highly recommended.5 s atom_box Evan G173 4

Paul Beatty did a careful job curating this. I'm relieved to see that Beatty is Kurt Vonnegut or Mark Twain: all three men are jokers but they take their position in the academy seriously.

The fifty selections in Hokum are presented in three sections:
- "Black Absurdity"
- "Just Buggin"
- "Pissed Off to the Highest Degree of Pisstivity"

In the last category (Pissed Off) is the chapter of Mike Tyson quotes. At first, his words just feel novel: Mike Tyson? Anthologized in a serious academic collection? Wild! But reflecting on its pissed off framing, pissed off Mike Tyson becomes really interesting, as a bookend to pissed off Sojourner Truth at the beginning of the chapter. This is an amazing book.

I loved Beatty's selection from Invisible Man; he chose the yam vendor. (That was one of my top five Invisible Man moments, in a book of great moments: tension between north and south, the weariness of being pretentious, the appearance of a random stranger as guru, the truth of food.)

Hokum makes me think of one interview I heard, with a black trombone player, from 2020, on this show called Gimlet Resistance podcast. That trombonist told a story about, as a black man, he was really provoked when he discovered that "Dixie" (the song) was written by black musicians in Ohio. Being from Ohio himself this trombonist sought to revive the song and maybe be a little provocative, incorporating it in his shows. He plays white spaces. And it didn't go well. The audience d it for all of the wrong reasons.

Paul Beatty presents some of these things a black trombonist playing Dixie. It feels complicated and layered. Whether reading it while white, or while black, I think the sum effect is going to be complicated.

This book would be a valuable prop for a lazy teacher. She could easily toss this into a room, step back and say "Discuss!" and the class would sort of run itself for 15 weeks.

I assumed there would be 500 on Goodreads. No: only 17. Is the cover art too crazy for them to stock it in the required textbooks section of the student bookstore? I hope this stays in print forever.1 Steve Kohn73 1 follower

Another 1-star review said "451 pages, no laughs. Not one."

Well, there were a few, but so very few, it makes me wonder at the book's title. "Humor?" What humor?

Signed out of our public library after reading "The Sellout," a book I admired a lot, written by the same Paul Beatty, I am unable to see what he was attempting to give us with "Hokum." It certainly wasn't to make us laugh.

He does succeed in making me think American blacks are filled with self-hatred, and obsessed with skin color far more than us whites. Verbal cleverness seems to be highly prized. (The abominable rap comes to mind.) Morals seem not to be, nor much respect for the law. Not my opinion, but what any objective reader would conclude reading this book.

Yes, I know: slavery, then Jim Crow.

Was it the length of time these awful conditions existed that's at the root of the problem? Because other people who came to America also had terrible suffering in their history -- arguably worse than slavery -- without becoming so broken. We look at that peculiar game, the dozens, where one's mothers are obscenely insulted (mothers!), and wonder why this "game" doesn't exist among any other group.

OK, I'm rambling, going nowhere, and it doesn't really matter if you're considering buying the book, so let's talk about that.

A few pages were enjoyable, a few were brilliant (a poem by John Rodriguez especially).

A few pages had the explicit descriptions of sex (Steve Cannon) that I used to hope to find as a teenager over 50 years ago, but that weren't at all funny and were included in this book for reasons that escape me.

A number of pages were included only, it seems, for their historical quality, not their humor. Al Sharpton and H. Rap Brown were political, not funny, and both individuals reprehensible in my eyes. Why give us the crudity, the stupidity of Brown but not the brilliance of Eldridge Cleaver, both in the same period of American history?

Kyle Baker's cartoons were mostly about white characters. Was Baker included just because he is part black? Which is a ridiculous reason, of course, but then, why? Beatty is clearly no fool; what is he trying to tell us by including Baker?

I think of the brilliant monologues Richard Pryor did on network TV in the 1970s. They made us feel the pain of thrown-away members of society, and yet they were also funny. In this book we get the pain, not the laughter. Pryor showed us how to have both.

This book is subtitled "An Anthology of African-American Humor." If this is humor, pass me the poison. Almost none of this book is funny. Could that be Beatty's point? That the black experience in America is so tragic that very little humor can be found in it?

But that can't be. Not when we have Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Chris Rock and countless others.

Again, I'm respectful of the editor's writing skills. I simply have no idea why he thought so much of this book was humorous.1 Todd MelbyAuthor 2 books8

I've fallen into a deep Paul Beatty hole. I've read all of his novels and now this fantastic collection. He calls this anthology a "mix tape" and not a definitive collection of African-American humor. That said, there's a lot of great stuff in here from expected and unexpected authors: Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B DuBois, but also Mike Tyson. (Mike Tyson!) And people I had never read: Henry Dumas.1 Richard Anderson1,194 6

A lot of great, hard to find material.1 Doug LewarsAuthor 16 books10

*** Possible spoilers ***

About half this book was poetry and since I don't care for it, I skipped that part.

This book is classified as humor. Of the prose, I'd estimate 10% was humorous and 90% wasn't. If you want to give this book a try, you can fairly accurately judge whether an individual story will be funny or not by reading the first couple of pages. If you don't it, move on to the next one.

I read this as an e-book and the formatting was awful. The end of one story might well appear in the middle of the next. Spacing was bad in some places. I don't think anyone checked the format after uploading it.

There is one extract which made the effort worthwhile for me. It was a satire titled 'Black No More', written by George Schuyler in 1931 and was possibly the best satire I've ever read - certainly among the top ten. If you've read Tom Sharpe, this was satire on a par with his work. Even if you don't read another word in the book, I highly recommend this one extract. It's brilliant. The premise is someone discovers a drug which causes a black person to become white. This is not mere skin lightening. Someone pays some money, walks into a private medical facility and, six weeks later, walks out as a Caucasian. Not surprisingly, a number of people and groups react poorly to the idea. If you feel having a chuckle, give this one a try. boring humour O179

Maybe I'm not smart enough, but I didn't catch the humor in many of the selections chosen, especially in the last half to third of the anthology. The Kindle version I was reading was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, which made reading even more cumbersome, especially for the selections written in dialect. It was okay. Tony Britt70 1 follower

Read the first 400 pages, but couldn't get through it. Learned about many more important Black American artists. Enjoyed a few chuckles. Maybe as a white American male who's trying to re-educate himself about racism, I'm not close enough to the Black experience to feel comfortable about laughing.black-history1 Flip11

So funny. Aicheyearaem3

Excellent collection! Mr. Beatty's intro is fantastic - do wish he had intro'd each piece--only because I'm greedy for his voice! Mria Quijada46 8

I was excited to think there was a book by Paul Beatty that I hadn't yet read.
Unfortunately, this is just a compilation of previously published work by other authors that he compiled. Chris Knutson40 1 follower

Some absolute comedy gems in here and Beatty’s pieces were all excellent, wish he’d done more of them and provided a little more context throughout Max-Philipp23

My personal favourite Beatty book. That introduction is fascinating and what he includes in his 'mixtape' is just spectacular. 1 Brian Deese13

I would to thank the author for bringing these stories to light but I found the material depressing to read and could not finish the book. It's hard to believe that at one point in history this treatment of African-Americans was standard practice. I can understand the writers frustration with the state of things in America and probably felt a strong urge to vent their frustrations. I am frankly thankful to not have been born during this era and can appreciate the sacrifices made by those known and unknown. Kari5 1 follower

Someone had the guts to compile a book of black American oratory that was never meant to be 'funny' and call it for what it is: hilarious. Everything from H. Rap Brown to Richard Pryor and back. Patrick823 6

Only for the decicated reader. Ashley581 40 Want to read

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