Laughing Matters: Conversations on Humor

In Laughing Matters (special edition), Ilan Stavans and Frederick Luis Aldama explore the meanings of laughter and humor through a series of funny, insightful conversations. The conversations focus on how laughter functions as a social tool. They also explore what laughter represents in different social situations. As it states in the preface, “our inability to tickle ourselves tells us about the psycho-social-implications of laughter.” Meaning that humor is not the only source for laughter. We laugh for various reasons. Many have to do with the social situations where humor might not even be present. Why do we want to laugh when social interactions become awkward? Why do we internalize our humor instead of saying all the jokes that come to mind?  

The book consists of five different chapters—the chapters function as shifts between the conversations dealing with different views on what laughter represents and what humor represents. The book opens with a clear summary to their themes and main points. The first chapter consists of funny exchanges between Aldama and Stavans on the sources of humor. They discuss the way humor is represented in media, art, and philosophy. The second chapter discusses ridicule—this chapter weaves their ideas of ridicule through religion, death, Cervantes, Plato, and several other subject matter. They dissect what they personally find funny as an attempt to understand why they laugh. Stavans then proves his expertise on Don Quixote of La Mancha. In this chapter, they discuss the issues with translating humor between cultures, race, and language. Chapter four introduces several ideas about jokes and why we laugh at them. They discuss the issues of racism  and prejudices found in jokes. Do we always have to be politically correct when it comes to jokes? Not always… especially, if you do a good job with the joke. They discuss what humor does to film and, again, talk about the issues with humor translating between languages and cultures. They provide concrete, relevant examples for the translation of humor. An informative discussion occurs on films like Casa de mi padre and Machete. Why was it so hard for people to find Casa de mi padre funny? Because its humor didn’t translate to the American audience. As Aldama argues, unless you are familiar with telenovelas or Mexploitation, then many of the jokes are going to go over your head (Video Clip of Aldama discussing Mexican filmmakers in the U.S. on MSNBC). The closing chapter dives into of taboo subjects and what might just be too offensive.They contemplate these issues and consider the consequences from offensive humor.

“Humor is a breather. It interrupts life as routine.”

If you are anything like me, you might have a hard time internalizing your laughter. I find myself laughing constantly making a joke out of pretty much anything. This book shed some light on what the laughter might represent. For me, the more uncomfortable the situation, the more I joke around. The more stress I have in my life, the more I find myself laughing with other people. Laughter is a social activity. It feels best around others. The conversations in Laughing Matters are loaded with different views on humor and laughter. Stavans and Aldama don’t leave any funny stone unturned. If you are curious how humor and laughter function in art, literature, and media, this book will answer all your questions. You will laugh and not cry… well, maybe tears of laughter. 


Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. 

Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the Ohio State University. 


There are two editions to Laughing Matters:

Special Limited Edition Volume

& 

Regular Trade Edition 

John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California

When considering the canon, which American author comes to mind? For most Californians, this is author is John Steinbeck. He captured an image of California that is still completely relevant today. When considering why Steinbeck is a voice for California, we must think of Salinas, CA. Salinas represents all the hard labour that is found in California’s agriculture industry. This labour ripples through generations for Californians—it represents the issues with culture and race. 

Homer from Salinas is a wonderful collection of lectures, screenings, debates, discussions, and visual artifacts from incredibly insightful people. This celebration for Steinbeck's work was held from April to May in 2007 at SDSU. The book is organized into four parts—each part with several pieces that are on different themes dealing with issues such as labour, race, and class.  Most of Steinbeck’s work is covered in this collection. What is most important, is that this collection explores the relevancy of his work and what it means for Californian culture. Part Two of the book has discussions about Mexican-American culture. Hernán Moreno-Hinojosa describes his challenges with Steinbeck, but also praises him for writing about all minorities, not just Mexicans or people displaced by the dustbowl. He also discusses the parallels between his own writing to Steinbeck’s. It is discussions like this one that are found in this collection that illustrate the impact of Steinbeck’s writing to all minorities. What these discussions provide, are new insights from a set of diverse thinkers. This diversity is explored in Part Three, “Watching Steinbeck’s Ethnic Eye.” Different scholars raise different points about the ethnicity in Steinbeck’s work. The collections ends with a presentation on an exhibition that includes Horace Bristol’s photography. The exhibition documents California’s farm labor experience. The presentation goes into great detail about the migrant laborers of California. 

I, personally, come from a family of immigrants and I have family members that worked in agriculture. They traveled constantly up and down the California coast: Salinas, Monterey, Guadalupe, etc. When I read Steinbeck, I consider everything my family went through once they got to California. Whether you’re a Mexican-American or a Californian, Steinbeck’s work is more than worth reading. This collection proves that Steinbeck is still completely relevant when talking about present-day issues. So if you’re a Steinbeck scholar or want a new perspective into Steinbeck’s work, get your hands on this wonderful collection. 

This collection includes pieces by Jeffery Charles, Charles Wollenberg, William Deverell, Francisco X. Alarcón, Hernán Moreno-Honjosa, plus many more. 

The book can be found for purchase here. 

Adapting Activities For Therapeutic Recreation Service: Concepts and Applications By Jesse Dixon

Author, Jesse Thomas Dixon, delivers a fun, creative, and interactive book on creating toys and learning devices that are adaptive to children’s disabilities. From a table tennis ball retriever to a one handed fishing reel, readers will find in creativity and range of these convenient ideas. Some of these ideas includes a self-retrieving table tennis ball device and a one handed fishing reel.

 

A general qualm special-needs classrooms have is that there is a limited amount of activities their students can participate in. Answering that call, this book offers a resourceful catalogue of activities for students of the physically impaired. For a valuable and extensive critical look into the variety of activities this book illustrates, check out Jesse Dixon’s contribution to social welfare Adapting Activities For Therapeutic Recreation Service:Concepts and Applications.

Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews by Daniel A. Olivas

Daniel A. Olivas’ Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews provides a fascinating, penetrative look at the Latino/a writer’s perspective and the creative process by compiling a collection of Olivas’ own writing and a collection of his interviews with other Latino/a writers. By the end, the reader will have explored a multitude of topics concerning cultural inclusion/exclusion and the Latino/a experience, all the while digging ever deeper into what it means to be a writer and how that work comes to be.

First come Olivas’ own essays.  This collection creates a kaleidoscopic montage of moments and musings on why writing is something that Olivas cannot not do and how his particular perspective, as a writer, lawyer, Latino is both singular and universal; it is his own, but it is also all of ours. His themes are more than just cultural. They are about identity and history and how we find ourselves situated in the world.  In “Still Foreign Correspondent” he explains that his writings “…though reflecting on my cultural experiences, nonetheless focus on universal themes such as love, family dynamics and life’s struggles.  In other words, I use fiction to confront the vagaries of the human condition.”  This universality of experience is engaging and unifying, showing us that individual experience is not a disconnected, relativistic thing but a part of a larger whole, an opportunity to see how we all have something to contribute. All experiences are valid and they matter, and Olivas’ love for writing inspires readers to acknowledge it as something that is worth sharing.  His detailing of his creative process throughout these essays illustrates and inspires. A particularly excellent example comes in the essay “Writers Write. Period” where he emphasizes, “A writer finds time to write regardless of hectic schedules, energetic children, and needy lovers. No excuses.” He will then prove this point in the second half of the book, by interviewing other Latino/a writers.

This second part of the book demonstrates what it means to be a writer and the work that it takes to establish that role.  His interviews of many well-known Latino/a writers continue his project of highlighting the creative process and shared experiences.  One of the most fascinating notes comes from Olivas’ Introduction asks the reader to remember that “the responses are frozen in time. That is to say, the authors would not give precisely the same answers today.”  This reminder gives each writer’s interview an emphatic resonance, offering a snapshot of the writer in a particular moment, emphasizing the importance of change and evolution of their work.

Keeping this in mind when reading the interviews from writers like Sandra Cisneros, Aaron Michael Morales, and Reyna Grande, allows us to see the writer’s voices as not indicative of their entire writing philosophy, but as an experience shared in order to contribute to the larger community.  It bridges the two sections of the book with the theme of a collective and communal experience created from individual stories.  The interviews focus on the where the call to arises and how each writer answers that call in their own way. The effect, by the end of the interview section, is a sense of a writer’s writer, finding a way to give voice and agency to others and ultimately build a community created by and shaped through the shared experience of writing and how that experience is lived and worked in different ways by each of these writers.

Things We Do Not Talk About is more than a title—it’s a challenge.  Olivas’ project digs deep into the things we believe we “just do.” He asks his interviewees to dive into their creative process and how they find themselves situated in the world as writers and as part of the Latino/a community, while his own essays reveal the work of writer digging into the experiences that shape him (and us) and how that connects to a larger, shared experience. The end result inspires readers to accept the challenge.  What things do you not talk about? What would we gain from having that conversation? Olivas promises that it would be a worthwhile endeavor.

Things We Do Talke About is available from the SDSU Press story on Amazon here.

Naturalist Poetry: Defining Our Lives— Permanent Work: Poems 1981-1992. A San Diego State University Press (SDSU Press) Literature Release

Permanent Work: Poems1981-1992 by Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz details how inspiration can be found in all things, no matter how small, nor how much something is taken for granted that when taken apart it becomes more beautiful. Whether to observe the actions of humans or the nature that they are surrounded by; Muñoz paints us a vivid picture with carefully chosen words to give a new perspective of the world.

Time is something that affects all living creatures, slowly chipping away at life, incidentally, however, this decay adds to the beauty of creation. With new life comes death, followed by decay, loss, and loneliness. Muñoz shares these emotions with so few of words, painstaking, carefully, perfectly chosen without muddling the overall ideology or naturalistic tendencies of the work.  "The world/ Offers itself/ And reverberates/ My eyes/ Perceive/ The clarity of each object" (Dawn, 11).His work transcends a sense of surrealism, this helps Muñoz grasp the details of the surroundings, taking them apart, bit by bit, and in doing so, he exemplifies its beauty.

Life is intertwined and tangled with so many constraints, "The chaos/ To which all living beings/ Belong" (49) we all affect one another, and influence our surroundings without a conscious effort. Simply living is enough create, destroy, and stagnate. "Who am I/ To die now/ To live now/ That everything is over" (12). A progression of human life can be summarized in so few of words with such accuracy, how difficult it can be to continue to go on as strongly as before with the same positive mindset. 

Muñoz shows us how our lives are our own to create and lead them through our choices, "I am the alchemist who transforms/ The basest metals into glowing gold" (41). Only with our own hands can we choose worth of our existence. Only the owner of their own life can weigh their worth. 

To read more of PermanentWork: Poems 1981-1992 follow the link to purchase.

Read the latest San Diego State University Press Blog release here.

The Art of Identity: Goat Tails and Doodlebugs by Everett Gee Jackson. A San Diego State University Press (SDSU Press) Release

Goat Tails and Doodlebugs is a classic tale of finding their roots. With all great artists comes a great beginning, Everett Jackson is no exception. He writes of his trials through childhood, which demonstrates his upbringing in search of his identity. Going as far as undecided gender and race, He slowly begins to gain an idea of who he is through his travels in Texas, Southern California, Northern Mexico, and South America. His book reads like a diary, detailing his experiences in border towns, daily life on the road with his partners, and the story of finding himself though art. With many trips to Mexico and South America, Jackson, is exposed to both the natural beauty of the countries as well as the hearts of the people that surround him. The landscape, culture, and its people become a major inspiration towards Jackson's artwork. 

 

Jackson's tale shows the growth of an artist through finding his roots and coming in touch with those around him. Through his experience he changed as an artist, find out more about Jackson and his works of art by following this link to purchase. 

Get the most up to date San Diego State University Press Blog by clicking here.

Also take a look at Jackson's Four Trips to Antiquity featured here. 

Disappearing Individualism and Cultural Identity: Four Trips to Antiquity by Everett Gee Jackson. A San Diego State University Press (SDSU Press) Release

Four Trips to Antiquity

The absorption of an original culture slowly dwindling down and disappearing much like the Mayan's last remaining artifacts slowly crumble and fade away with time. By pollution, weather, tourists, or the passing by drunk each takes a toll on what is left of the artifacts. Remaining cultures are destroyed much in the same way from being absorbed, wiped out or becoming influenced by western influence. Eventually the only proof of their existence will be the words upon a textbook page. 

Within Four Trips Jackson describes the heritage and peoples of the South American Indians and the problems they face, from explosions in the cities to how easily they are swayed based on empty promises from politicians. "Look at your feet. Why are you not wearing shoes? Other people wear shoes, but not you Indians...I looked down at my own feet. Neither was I wearing shoes I discarded them when I arrived in Copan and had put on guaraches instead, the kind of sandals worn by the Indians...making the Indians dissatisfied with their lot might assure him their favor and their vote" (64). Stores also begin to take advantage of the Indians by capitalizing off them who without care contribute to the pollution of the area, "But they left the plaza littered with empty Dr. Pepper bottles. Obviously the store which sold the drink knew in advance that the Dr. Pepper-drinking Indians were coming"(64). This results in further destruction of cultural identity

"[It] was a great misfortune one moonlit night when a drunk came walking along here he suddenly had a violent impulse. To relieve his anger he hurled a big rock, or perhaps an empty bottle, into the figures face...It had withstood many storms for over thirteen hundred years, and then a worthless drunk had to disfigure its face" (165). Much like the drunk, it does not take much to destroy a civilization that survived for so long on its own. Whether its disease, xenophobia, or war once civilizations are wiped out they cannot be brought back much like these statues. 

A Current example of this is the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Northern Japan. The Ainu people were seen as a pest after mainland Japan acquired Hokkaido around the early 1800's. They were introduced to new diseases and used in forced manual labor where many died. They were never seen as Japanese nor have they been even now. In 1984 the Ainu census was shown that there were 24,381 left in Hokkaido, which is slowly growing after their numbers fell as low as 15,969 in 1931. If they had not fought back so hard, it would have been the last of them just as it has been for many tribes and indigenous people. 

If effort is not made to conserve our ancient cultures, they will be nothing more than crumbling stone, and words they grace the pages of forgotten textbooks. We can only hope that the pieces will live on in his artwork his own form of conservation.  

Take a trip to antiquity by purchasing the book here.

Get the most up to date San Diego State University Press Blog by clicking here.

Also take a look at Jackson's other book Goat Tails and Doodlebugs, blogged about here. 

Feminism & Border Issues-- Theatrics or Reality?: In this Corner, Short Plays by Rosina Conde, Ignacio Flores De La Lama, Juan Rea, and Hugo Salcedo. A San Diego State University Press Release (SDSU Press)

Shattered relationships and broken hearts are forced into the boxing ring, spouses become opponents pinned against one another, within their cage called marriage they must accept their differences and reconcile, bitterly part ways, or stay trapped in the hell that they have ensnared themselves in. 

"In this Corner," consists of four short plays by Rosina Conde, Ignacio Flores De La Lama, Juan Rea, and Hugo Salcedo. The plays illustrate gender roles and feminism in marriage, breaking stereotypes, and conforming to society's vision of what marriage "must" be. 

While dating there is a  fight to keep the other within grasp, mutterings of sweet nothings defiling the air from the sordid serpents tongue. Money, lingers like dollar signs in the eyes for prestige is everything. Even pity and is used to trap one another's heart like the slow strangulation of wedding bells chimes. 

Gender roles are brought up to the forefront of the arguments in all three plays, each demonstrating its impact on a marriage. "But you shouldn't have left. You should have stayed with me even though I said not to, because your duty was to follow me even if I rejected you. (With scorn.) That is the duty of all women, to follow their men" (48). Marriage is often viewed as a one-sided fight for control, with the ideology that one spouse must lead the other. "HE: Yes. SHE: "Yes." Is that all you can say? HE: (After a pause.) Yes. SHE: Idiot" (11). Women fight back in these plays to demonstrate that they can lead the relationship.

Marriage, in these plays, demonstrates emotions that can arise after the vows have been taken. Jealousy, selfishness, oppression, coupled with the lies and deceit that accompany them. 

These four plays are a modern day Ibsen's version of "The Doll House," which gives the reader a modernly founded basis on the gender roles in marriage and relationships. When comparing back to Ibsen (and many others) we can see that even over hundreds of years that the gloves are still on in this telling book about the roles of marriage. 

Taking place in Tijuana, these boarder town casted plays can represent a modern take on US/Mexico Boarder issues. Who will dominate whom? Who has the "right" to lead or be led? Indulge in these multi-perspective plays. Leave us your comment below!

Order your copy by following this link, and read the most up to date blogs of San Diego State Press here.

Also of interest

Conspiracy Theory in Criticism

The Avant Garde of Attitude