c.2025, Pantheon
\n$28.00
\n256 pages<\/p>\n
By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/p>\n
The Truth Contributor<\/p>\n
Bust a gut.<\/p>\n
Laugh your rear-end off. Laugh yourself silly, until you almost cried, it\u2019s the best medicine. Had you rolling in the aisles, holding your sides coz they hurt. When something\u2019s funny, you know it but what does humor look like across racial lines? In the new book, That\u2019s How They Get You<\/em>, edited by Damon Young, <\/strong>it might get the last laugh.<\/p>\n When he was a kid in Pittsburgh, Damon Young thought his friend, Var Butler \u201cwas the funniest person I\u2019d ever met.\u201d Var didn\u2019t go for nasty humor and he didn\u2019t hurt people who couldn\u2019t defend themselves. Instead, says Young, Var \u201cintuitively knew the power dynamics baked into humor\u2026\u201d And, as he understands now, Var\u2019s humor was honest, homegrown, and not \u201cA rich<\/em>-white-person thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Says Young, \u201cWhat makes Black humor Black<\/em> ain\u2019t the subject matter, because not all humor involving Black people is Black. Sometimes, it\u2019s just humor.\u201d<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to be Eddie or Martin or Cedric to be funny. You could be like the many authors of the stories in this book.<\/p>\n In \u201cNo One Makes \u2018Yo Mama\u2019 Jokes After the Funeral\u201d by Hanif Abdurraqib, <\/strong>bad timing can be awkward \u2013 but it can also be wholly, perfectly Mama \u201csung back to life\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever wanted to change what folks call you, \u201cThe Karen Rights Act\u201d by Mateo Askaripour<\/strong> is your story. That woman\u2019s name says it all. Too much, in fact, but only for offending white females.<\/p>\n Nobody but Miss Ruby cooks in Miss Ruby\u2019s kitchen \u2013 until Alex Hardy<\/strong> convinces his grandma that he\u2019s capable with a spoon. In \u201cUnmurdered in Grandma\u2019s Kitchen,\u201d <\/strong>his meals for the family hasn\u2019t killed anyone yet.<\/p>\n And if you\u2019ve ever been irritated by a co-worker, then you need to read \u201cThe Necessary Changes Have Been Made\u201d by Nafissa Thompson-Spires<\/strong>. When Randolph gets a new job, it seems perfect, until he\u2019s told that his perfect office must now be shared. But his new co-worker definitely doesn\u2019t share his opinions\u2026<\/p>\n Chances are that if you see That\u2019s How They Get You<\/em> on a shelf somewhere, you might grab it, expecting to spend the rest of your day laughing.<\/p>\n And you\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n While the personal essays and fiction inside this book are good \u2013 very<\/strong> good, in fact; some of them are downright excellent and you\u2019ll want to turn around and read them again on the spot \u2013 many of them are not funny.<\/p>\n One essayist even says it: \u201cIt\u2019s funny, really. Not ha-ha funny<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The stories might be about humor or situations that will make you snort. There\u2019s a theme here and it\u2019s clever, sometimes sweet, written in perfectly cynical tones. But will you take off your glasses, wipe your eyes, and call someone to share? Not so much.<\/p>\n Absolutely, read this book. It\u2019s an excellent collection, you\u2019ll enjoy what you find inside That\u2019s How They Get You<\/em>, and you\u2019ll find a whole new group of writers to follow. Just be aware that if you\u2019re looking for ROFL kinds of laughs, it could be a bust.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" c.2025, Pantheon $28.00 256 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Bust a gut. Laugh your rear-end off. Laugh yourself silly, until you almost cried, it\u2019s the best medicine. Had you rolling in the aisles, holding your sides coz they hurt. When something\u2019s funny, you know it but what does humor look like across racial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-16514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16516,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514\/revisions\/16516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16514"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=16514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}