![]() ![]() It’s a great relief, then, that McBride - with the same flair for historical mining, musicality of voice and outsize characterization that made his memoir, “The Color of Water,” an instant classic - pulls off his portrait masterfully, like a modern-day Mark Twain: evoking sheer glee with every page. Does this mark the triumph of irony, to the point where it has dulled our emotional response to history? Or does it denote progress: we’ve come so far from historical horrors that we freely jest about them? Either way, it’s a risky endeavor maladroit jokes about slavery aren’t just bad, they’re hazardous. to be boldly irreverent about not just the sacrosanct but also the catastrophic. ![]() The first is from Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” the second, from the acclaimed sketch series “Key and Peele.” The third is among countless uproarious moments in “The Good Lord Bird,” McBride’s brilliant romp of a novel about Brown, narrated by a freed slave boy who passes as a girl.Īll three scenes signal a new way of talking - indeed, joking - about race in America today: it is officially O.K. ![]()
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