{"product_id":"to-be-real-jacobs-9780190870089","title":"To Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy","description":"\u003cem\u003eTo Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy\u003c\/em\u003e examines Black standup comedy over the past decade as a stage for understanding why notions of racial authenticity--in essence, appeals to \"realness\" and \"real Blackness\"--emerge as a cultural imperative in African American culture. Ethnographic observations and interviews with Black comedians ground this telling, providing a narrative arc of key historical moments in the new millennium. Readers will understand how and why African American comics invoke \"realness\" to qualify nationalist 9\/11 discourses and grapple with the racial entailments of the war, overcome a sense of racial despair in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, critique Michael Richards' [\"Kramer's\"] notorious rant at The Laugh Factory and subsequent attempts to censor their use of the n-word, and reconcile the politics of a \"real\" in their own and other Black folks' everyday lives. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAdditionally, readers will hear through audience murmurs, hisses, and boos how beliefs about racial authenticity are intensely class-wrought and fraught. Moreover, they will appreciate how context remains ever critical to when and why African American comics and audiences lobby for and\/or lampoon jokes that differentiate the \"real\" from the \"fake\" or \"Black folks\" from so-called \"niggahs.\" Context and racial vulnerability are critical to understanding how and why allusions to \"racial authenticity\" persist in the African American comedic and cultural imagination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Lanita Jacobs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0190870087\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780190870089\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/18\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.70lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.60h x 6.20w x 0.80d","brand":"Lanita Jacobs","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44077872283903,"sku":"9780190870089","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_f08610d3-7929-41c4-afbd-cc0635522146.jpg?v=1685472239","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/to-be-real-jacobs-9780190870089","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}