Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore / Edition 1

by Alan Dundes

Overview

Exploring the scope, diversity, and vitality of black culture, here is a fascinating collection of more than sixty articles from some of the most perceptive and authoritative commentators upon the black experience—Zora Neale Hurston, J. Mason Brewer, Sterling A. Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Willis Laurence James, John Lovell Jr., Langston Hughes, Charles W. Chesnutt, Alan Lomax, Ralph Ellison, A. Philip Randolph, Newbell Niles Puckett, Roger D. Abrahams, and many others.

Readers cannot help coming away from this book with a new appreciation of the nature and richness of African American folklore. For those with little or no previous knowledge of this heterogeneous and spellbinding lore Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel will be an eye-opening encounter.

Drawn out of the deep, rich well of African American culture, these essays convey the import of the black folk experience for all Americans. No library or individual with a serious interest in African American folklore should fa

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878054787
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	12/01/1990
Series:	Critical Studies on Black Life and Culture
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	702
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alan Dundes (1934-2005) was professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. Among many others, his books include Interpreting Folklore and From Game to War and Other Psychoanalytic Essays on Folklore. He is author of Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Preface to the 1973 Edition	xii
	Folk & Lore	1
	Race Pride & Folklore	3
	As Crinkly as Yours	9
	My People! My People!	22
	The Negro Folk Cult	34
	Backgrounds of Folklore in Negro Literature	39
	The Negro Writer in America: An Exchange	45
I.	The Folk Tradition	46
II.	Change The Joke And Slip The Yoke	56
	On Origins	65
	The Negro-White Spiritual	67
	African Influence on the Music of the Americas	81
	Residual African Elements in the Blues	95
	Jazz Choreology	104
	African Tales Among the North American Indians	114
	Problems Confronting the Investigator of Gullah	126
	Americanisms That May Once Have Been Africanisms	136
	Folk Speech	141
	Designations for Colored Folk	142
	Names of American Negro Slaves	156
	On the Grammar of Afro-American Naming Practices	175
	Black Ulysses in Camp	182
	Dialogues of the Old & the New Porter	199
	The Technique of Jive	206
	Story in Harlem Slang	222
	The Language of Soul	230
	Hidden Language: Ghetto Children Know What They're Talking About	238
	Verbal Art	245
	Old-Time Negro Proverbs	246
	Old-Time Courtship Conversation	251
	Double Meaning in the Popular Negro Blues	258
	I Can Peep Through Muddy Water & Spy Dry Land: Boasts in the Blues	267
	The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult	277
	Playing the Dozens	295
	Signifying	310
	Toasts	329
	Meet "Mr. Franklin": An Example of Usage	348
	Street Smarts	353
	Folk Belief	357
	Conjuring & Conjure-Doctors	359
	Superstitions & Folklore of the South	369
	Braziel Robinson Possessed of Two Spirits	377
	Mojo	380
	The Little Man	388
	The Human Hand Threat	397
	Contemporary Patterns of Malign Occultism Among Negroes in North Carolina	402
	Symbiosis: The Case of Hoodoo & the Numbers Racket	419
	Folk Music	429
	The Romance of the Negro Folk Cry in America	430
	Negro "Shouts" from Georgia	445
	The Social Implications of the Negro Spiritual	452
	Follow the Drinking Gourd	465
	I Got the Blues	469
	Protest and Irony in Negro Folksong	487
	Social Influences on Jazz Style: Chicago, 1920-30	501
	The Acculturation of the Delta Negro	515
	Folk Narrative	523
	Uncle Remus & the Malevolent Rabbit	524
	High John de Conquer	541
	Negro Humor: John & Old Marster	549
	The Steel Drivin' Man	561
	The Career of "John Henry"	568
	Ba-ad Nigger	578
	The Ghostly Legend of the Ku-Klux Klan	586
	Caddy Buffers: Legends of a Middle-Class Negro Family in Philadelphia	595
	Folk Humor	611
	Frontiers of Humor: American Vernacular Dance	613
	Humor as a Technique in Race Conflict	620
	Jokes Among Southern Negroes: The Revelation of Conflict	628
	Jokes Negroes Tell on Themselves	637
	Genital Superiority in Oakland Negro Folklore: A Theme	642
	Jokes and Black Consciousness: A Collection with Interviews	649
	Suggestions for Further Reading in American Negro Folklore	670
	Addendum	673
	Additional Sources for Afro-American Scholarship	675