Hokum

Hokum was a funny book to even look at.  At the beginning of the class, we discussed about how 'Humor' is something that has strict ethical boundaries.  It is not intended to judge people, stereotype people and split the people involved in the humor directly or indirectly based on color or religion.  And then we have here, Hokum, that has most of those things that we quite don't want to see, as 'an anthology of african-american humor'.
 
The book by itself has a stereotype on its cover page. It has a half eaten watermelon set in a black background.  Even though some of the blacks might like to be associated with their stereotypes because it talks about their struggles and gives them a sense of oneness, I feel stereotypes tend to heavily close our field of view.  I ask myself, "Do all blacks like watermelons?"
 
Nonetheless, the readings were fun.  They were light, silly and childish. Because of the presence of an authoritative hierarchy, these stories could almost be seen as a teacher-child interaction; where a child lies to his teacher and gets punished for that.
 
The slang however threw me back when I started reading.  The sentence structure was completely different and hard to comprehend until I read it by putting the sentences into context. However, I felt happy to have gotten a valuable insight into old African-American writing styles, even though the English used was weird.
 
The word usage was different too.  'R's in the places of 'S's made it funny and weird to read. I 'warn't' aware that that was allowed. The nouns used to call the characters in the stories were interesting.  I thought the use of 'Cats' for the cotton pickers and 'Queen' for the main character's girl was funny.
 
The story 'On Being Crazy' definitely was my favorite because it spoke a lot about the history of the blacks in the United States.  They were opressed and humiliated but the blacks never retaliated with force, or more like they didn't have the means or power to fight back. My favorite excerpt from the story is

'Walking, I met a wayfarer who immediately walked to the other side of the road where it was muddy. I asked his reasons.
"Niggers is dirty," he said
"So is mud," I said. Moreover I added, I am not as dirty as you- at least not yet'

This made me think further deeper as to how bitter and inhumane discrimination based on color was.

Listed below are two of the lines that I had a good laugh on.

• "With tears in my eyes as big as dill pickles. I couldn't hardly wait to get my pay..." (Himes, 33)
• "Dear Sugar Pie:                                                                                                                       You doesn understand. I aint made dollar the first. Cotton aint what you think. Ifn you got any cotton dresses burn em. ..." (Himes 35)