A01=J Finley
African American humor
African Diaspora Studies
Author_J Finley
Black butch women in comedy
Black feminist humor
Black feminist performance
Black womanhood in popular culture
Black women resisting slavery
Black women's comedy
Black women's humor
Black women's sass
Cardi B
Category=ATXD
Category=JBSF1
Category=JBSL
critical humor studies
discourse genres
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminist ethnography
Harriet Jacobs resisting sexual abuse
Jackie "Moms" Mabley
Jada Pinkett Smith
LaWanda Page
Megan Thee Stallion
sass
sassiness
sassy
talking back to authority
Product details
- ISBN 9781469680019
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 Aug 2024
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Black women comedians are more visible than ever, performing around the world in physical venues like comedy clubs and festivals, along with appearing in films, streaming specials, and online videos. Across these mediums, humor, and particularly sass, functions as a tool for Black women to articulate and redress cultural, social, and political marginalization.
J Finley theorizes sass as a new critical lens to better understand the power of Black women's humor and humanity, and how sass functions as a powerful resource in Black women's expressive repertoire. Challenging mainstream assumptions about ""sassiness"" as an identity or personality trait to which Black women humorists may be reduced, Finley instead deploys sass to create a new genre of discourse for understanding the ways in which Black women use language, style, gesture, and intent to produce meaning—often humorous—in speaking back to authority. Grounded in an ethnographic approach to Black women's experiences, Finley conducted extensive interviews as well as participant-observation as a critic, audience member, and comic herself to collect and honor the stories that Black women comics tell about themselves. Interdisciplinary and conceptually rigorous, Finley's work shows us how we can and should read Black women's expressions of sass in humor as attempts at social transformation that involve a fundamental critique of power and authority, and a gesture at collective liberation.
J Finley theorizes sass as a new critical lens to better understand the power of Black women's humor and humanity, and how sass functions as a powerful resource in Black women's expressive repertoire. Challenging mainstream assumptions about ""sassiness"" as an identity or personality trait to which Black women humorists may be reduced, Finley instead deploys sass to create a new genre of discourse for understanding the ways in which Black women use language, style, gesture, and intent to produce meaning—often humorous—in speaking back to authority. Grounded in an ethnographic approach to Black women's experiences, Finley conducted extensive interviews as well as participant-observation as a critic, audience member, and comic herself to collect and honor the stories that Black women comics tell about themselves. Interdisciplinary and conceptually rigorous, Finley's work shows us how we can and should read Black women's expressions of sass in humor as attempts at social transformation that involve a fundamental critique of power and authority, and a gesture at collective liberation.
J Finley is associate professor of Africana studies at Pomona College.
