December 10–17, 1998

book quarterly

Sister Act

A lot of laughs with a lot of soul.

Reviewed by Paul Rosenberg

Honey, Hush! : An Anthology of African American Women's Humor

Edited by Daryl Cumber Dance

W.W. Norton, 673 p., $17.95

This anthology seeks to expose the richness of a tradition that has always been bedeviled by misrepresentation. Its very title, Honey, Hush!, captures the multilayered complexity of black women's humor and the way it's viewed by society at large.

On the one hand, as Dance observes, "If there is any one thing that has brought African-American women whole through the horrors of the middle passage, slavery, Jim Crow, Aunt Jemima, the welfare system, integration, the O.J. Simpson trial, and Newt Gingrich, it is our humor.… We haven't been laughing so much because things tickle us. We laugh, as the old blues line declares, to keep from crying."

On the other hand, African-American women's humor has been an "in-house affair" for a number of reasons, not least because of "white America's derogatory image of them as laughing clowns, incapable of serious and tragic concerns." Thus the expression "Honey, hush!" was born. Dance writes, "It really isn't a suggestion that the person stop talking, but rather a friendly encouragement, a mild suggestion of playful disbelief, or a suggestion that one is telling truths that are prohibited."

Dance's title works as a constant reminder of the complex and contradictory nature of the material. This holds true for the more sophisticated pieces as well as the folk material, new and old. Folk materials are included based not on authorship, obviously unknown, but on circulation amongst black women. Some have passed across lines of race and gender, and here take on distinct undertones as a result of the pieces around them. Within the book's wide range of material—including poems, blues lyrics, doggerel, anonymous jokes and tales, mimeographed items and excerpts from comedy routines, plays, novels, memoirs and other books—there's a lot that's funny, from side-splitting to smile-cracking. However, there's also much that's more in the way of fleshing things out, as if Dance still feels the need to provide some somber ballast to defend against the clownlike image.

Honey, Hush! is arranged in a series of thematic chapters, each with its own introductory essay. These range from "The Power and Strength of the Black Woman," "Motherly Advice," "The Black Community," "The Black Church and Churchgoers" to chapters on "Courtship and Good Loving" paired with "Problems With Husbands and Lovers" and four chapters tackling different aspects of race relations. With J.C. Watts, the only black Republican in Congress just elected to a leadership position, what could be more timely than the chapter "Just Like A White Man," to remind us where he's coming from?

Many of the authors are well known: Bessie Smith, Ethyl Waters, Moms Mabley, Zora Neale Hurston, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Terry McMillan, Whoopi Goldberg, Ntozake Shange, and the Delany Sisters, among others. But Dance also delights us with unexpected material, such as Sojourner Truth's 1867 speech peppered with a shrewd use of humor to get her points across. There's plenty here that's raw and roll-on-the-floor hilarious alongside stuff that will make you wince too hard to crack a smile. Some pieces say as much in a page or two as entire books, while others (Whoopi Goldberg's "Fontaine" springs to mind) only capture a fraction of their live embodiment. But all this is precisely the purpose of an anthology—not to define the limits or the totality of a literature, but to open up its range and possibilities, to inform and enchant us into further explorations, to make us hunger for more.

By bringing such a broad range of material together, Dance helps us see as whole and densely interwoven a vast tradition that's otherwise all-too-easily misunderstood, mocked or dismissed. Yes, there's a lot to laugh at here, but it's also a weapon against ignorance, confusion and despair. As much as black music has enriched American culture over the years, black women's humor holds the promise of taking us deeper, not just into their experience, but into all of ours.