Voice
The author does a great job including voice in this humorous yet heavy piece. This book addresses some serious topics about society that I'm sure society wouldn't be proud of now. But I appreciate how the author uses humor to lighten the mood of his stories, just to make it more enjoyable and less uncomfortable I guess. Every time the author begins on a topic or story about racial inequality or how he encounters racial profiling, he uses humor to lighten the heaviness of the topic altogether. For example, the author tells us about how he was stealing wine crates from a freight train car and the police showed up. He and many of his friends fled, and he describes how he was hiding under a car from the police so he wouldn't get caught. But to relieve the load of seriousness, he tells us about how he almost peed his pants because he was so frightened. I think the author used humor very effectively throughout this piece, and it shows that even if he's talking about a serious topic, he's the kind of person that can make it comfortable to talk about.
Another way to show voice in this piece that I noticed the author used was dialect. He used words like "ain't" and phrases like "You don't know shit from Shinola" as ways to show how a character talks. Throughout the part of the book I've read so far, a lot of those kinds of sentences and other dialect words have just popped up. Although the main character is from New York, he's currently in Kentucky. By using dialect or certain phrases that you might not hear everyday, it shows or indicates that he might be in the South, because stereotypically, that's how some southerners talk. I think that using dialect is an easy but effective way to show how someone might talk, or where they're from, and the author did a great job at doing just that.
Also, the reference to Shinola is not talking about the boot polish, Shinola is a euphemism for crap. I mean it could be talking about the boot polish brand, but I don't know for sure.
The dialect he used is really interesting. I like that you noticed it and mentioned it. Even if the humor was funny I think it took away from the seriousness and instead of lightening the mood it just made it seem less intense. It made it level out. The intenseness doesn't seem to be sustained. I love sustained constant pressure to think from the author. I'm not sure thats what this author is providing. Its not that its not a bad book, just doesn't sound like my style.
ReplyDeleteWhat's good home girl. I can actually really relate to this because I am a person that likes to make the best of situations. Unfortunately a lot of topics in today's society are really hard to make a joke out of because people get so easily offended. I still do it which in a way is a bad thing. There's defiantly a difference between having an optomistic view on things and just plain making innappropriate jokes about a serious topic. I think unless you've actually experienced the thing you're joking about you shouldn't make it a joke. I remember last year a bunch of people were making jokes about being Jewish and I found it so disrespectful. Our friends (who were Jewish) got so upset as one rightfully should they even took the measure to tell the principal and teachers. I think that in this case in your book when he mixes humor into the heavy topics it's totally ok because he's experiancing them but if it was just a stupid middle schooler making a bad joke it would not be ok. I often find myself annoyed at books that have disrespectful language about racial and ethnic differences. Anyway peace out.
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