Except for the beast fables, which are anciently derived from the world's multi-racial heritage, American Negro humor is rooted in... social oppression. And--again excepting the animal fables--it differs from classical Western and white American humor in another respect. It is totally devoid of those myth-making and myth-transmuting elements and symbols that appeal so deeply to the American mind in the works of the tall-tale tellers such as Davy Crockett, Seba Smith, Mike Fink, and Mark Twain. There are no Rip Van Winkles, Johnny Appleseeds, Paul Bunyans, or Calamity Janes--and none bearing the faintest resemblance to them--in Negro American humor. The myth-making figures in the literature of black Americans are the blues-haunted characters. They are Stagolee, John Henry, and Big Boy; they are Mary Lou, Frankie, and Sister Caroline. And they are not funny, least of all to the nameless hundreds of folk-Negroes who created them and the still-living thousands who love them and perpetuate them in song and story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, yo...u were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Funny ain't it. Here I am worrying about a woman. Men don't worry much about women when they're around. But when it gets way off f...rom home like we are now, and where he knows he's going a lot further away ... I mean that's when a woman gets workin' in your mind. You reckon you're a fool for not noticin' before how, how big a part of things they be. There ain't nothin' like seein' a woman's face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Zeb Calloway: This child's seen a heap of Injuns and most of this country. She's big and wild, colder than hell ... the Tetons sta...ndin' higher than the clouds. By beaver, there's nothin' prettier than the upper Missouri. She's wild and pretty like a virgin woman. But the prettiest part of it all belongs to her people--Blackfeet--proud Injuns. Ain't gonna let no white men spy on their country. Only thing they're feared of is a white man's sickness. Jim Deakins: What's that? Zeb: Grabs. White men don't see nothin' pretty lest they wants to grab it. The more they grab, the more they wanna grab. It's like a fever, and they can't get cured. The only thing for them to do is keep on grabbin' until everything belongs to white men and then start grabbin' from each other. Can't reckon Injuns got no reason to love nothin' white. By beaver, this child'd rather be in that Black Feet country than anywheres else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »