New Kid Response

 


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New Kid Response

            Jerry Craft’s New Kid has to be one of my favorite books we have read this semester—a descriptor I’ve handed out in the past, but this book runs away with the title due to its monumental achievement of making me laugh out loud, in real life, multiple times. Craft is able to convey so many nuances of the deeply problematic world of private school (speaking from experience) through the eyes of Jordan, whose narration is straight-to-the-point, funny, and true. The graphic novel medium offers so much opportunity for comedy, utilizing visual cues typically unavailable to a comedic novelist. For instance, early on in the story, as Jordan is just beginning to get a feel for his new school, he smiles at the sight of a Black man behind a steering wheel as he stands in a sea of white kids. This smile vanishes, accompanied by a cartoon frowny face, when the driver opens the car door to reveal a white student exiting the car, and...
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kalman

                There are big questions in Kalman’s   The Principles of Uncertainty.  She uses her art in tandem with handwritten passages in the style of diary entries. She questions (to name a few) the purpose of life, war, and death all in less than 400 pages. In the first section of Kalman’s work she presents the reader with a map of the United States—absurd and endearring in how wrong it is. Pennsylvania is down by Texas , Florida takes up the place where Maryland would be, and Hawaii (no longer an island) makes a new home in New England. As we read on, in Kalman’s handwritten font, she divulges that her mother drew this for her: “This is the world through her eyes” (9). She shares many different stories throughout her work, each feeling as ephemeral as the next. She doesn’t share (typically) the grandest story that each of the notable have but more so the “little” details of their lives: their friends, thei...
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Tyler Perry’s Madea

Matthew Spear Dr. Juniper Ellis EN346D.01 Seminar: Humor Studies 3 April 2023 Tyler Perry’s Madea             Tyler Perry’s Madea is doubtlessly a di v isive character in popular culture. A black man playing a large, loud black woman via the medium of drag performance is likely to turn heads no matter the setting. However, the book “Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings” offers a unique perspective on this character as well as the insights she might offer. When I began reading this text, I expected, frankly, some cheap and punchy toilet humor on the part of Tyler Perry in order to further cash in on his wildly successful Madea character. But the prose I discovered was far more developed, using comedy as a medium by which to show the good attributes and deep flaws of a character that Perry says was “inspired by his mother and aunt.” By keeping this inspiration in mind we as readers may be able to gleam more meaning...
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