Never funny. No, sir. Not funny in that way, sir. By joke I didn’t mean inconsequential. I meant a critique, like a political cartoon.
Of course not. Never. I knew it wouldn’t be funny. You might be able to laugh at it a lot, but it wouldn’t be funny. No way.
Richard Pryor funny? Paul Mooney funny? Eddie Murphy funny? Louis CK funny? Funny like your windbreaker? Bill Cosby funny? Maybe more like George Bush was a two-term president funny.
No, sir. Never again.
No.
Next time I’ll only hang an effigy.
No, sir. I’m just glad it’s over. It’s like I barely escaped a burning building.
If I could be there to make sure it went okay . . . but not in my hometown again . . . Well, actually, no, nowhere, in no one’s hometown.
I plan to! My answer won’t change regardless of how many ways you ask the question.
No, sir. I don’t know of any militia. I never saw any militia activity in Braggsville. Daron has never mentioned any militia to me. If I may ask a question, sir, when will . . . I don’t want anyone to know about those proposals . . . I would hate for the others to know about those letters . . . I wish I hadn’t read them . . .
There is none that I know of, and I’ve lived there all my life. That’s why you didn’t find anything when you combed the wood or the Holler. There is no militia or hate group in Braggsville. It’s the center, the heart of Georgia, the city that love built.
You mean the reenactors, the entire town, the state of Georgia, the South, or the entire United States of ’Merica?
GO AHEAD, MR. CHANG:
In the words of Ice-T, O.G., Eat a dick.
Please, Mr. Chang:
[PAUSE]
Blood is thicker than water, but you can stab a motherfucker to death with an icicle!
[DRAMATIC SIGH]
I’m reminded of this joke:
A very, very white kid walks into the kitchen where his mother is baking and rubs chocolate all over his face, and says, “Look, Mom, I’m black!” . . . No. Fuck that . . . An Asian kid walks into a kitchen. A handsome Asian kid. Real handsome. So you know he’s Malaysian. Smart, too. Smart as shit. In case you didn’t know he was Malaysian. (And shit is smart, smart is shit, who carries whom?) Walks into a kitchen where his mother is baking. He rubs chocolate on his face. He turns to his mother and says, “Look, Ibu, I’m a rapper!” His mother smacks his head, bends him over and spanks him, and says, “No. You’re going to law school! Go tell your uncles what you told me!” The boy finds one uncle and says, “Look, Pak Long, I’m a rapper!” His uncle bends him over, spanks him. Then tells him to go show his other uncle what he did. The boy runs out to the backyard, where his other uncle is medicating Cali-style. “Look, Pak Ngah! I’m a rapper.” His uncle laughs, reaches out to pluck him, but being heavily medicated, pokes him in the eye with his roach clip. The little boy—the smart, handsome little boy, that is—runs back into the kitchen and cries into his mother’s apron. What have you learned? she asks. The boy yells, “I’ve only been a rapper for five minutes and I already hate you Chinese people!”
See, as they say around Little D’s way, I ain’t no restaurant Tabasco. You heard my man, Big-C, fool! It’s gigantomachy, fool! Like Big-C, I still say it was a good idea. We’re activists. Activists are always ahead of their time.
And we never die—in peace or otherwise!
I’ve freed thousands of slaves,
and
I could have freed thousands more
had they known they were slaves.
—Harriet Tubman,
FOR REAL
Appendix 1
Sexicon (The Glossary for the Rest of Us)
Alien technology—See Incredible edibles.
Bingo wings—Aka triceps tacos, the bag of skin hanging inelegant from the triceps of many an arm. Most commonly seen when waving.
Braggsville—see U.S. of A.
Civil War—(1) Polite disagreement. (2) When people of the same race argue over what to do with people of another race. (3) Divide and conquer taken to the extreme.
Crumb catchers—Snake charmers.
Cultural relativity—We’re okay, they’re okay.
Curse of Ham—Genesis 9:24–25.
9:24—And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him.
9:25—And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Also known as the Curse of Canaan, Ham’s son. For centuries apologists quoted this verse to justify slavery. During the Enlightenment, religion was supplemented with scientific justification such as phrenology (the measuring of skulls). In modern times, both justifications have been supplanted by standardized testing and speech patterns.
D-Nice
Digital literacy event—See chapters 16 and 22.
Dropping it like it’s hot— Maybach make it rain pole tea party
Essentialize/essentialism—Essentialize lives next door to stereotype. They have been dating for some time now, and they frequently appear together on Fox News and at conservative events.
Ewoks—(1) Mammal-like bipeds native to the forest moon of Endor. Made famous by the Star Wars movies. (2) Tree huggers from the wilds of Berkeley.
Freud—Nineteenth-century cocaine enthusiast. “Woe to you, my Princess, when I come I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump— you shall see who is stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body. In my last severe depression I took coca again and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion . . .” [from an 1884 letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays].
Hermetic irony—(1) Aesthetic productions delivered without the metadiscursive features traditionally relied upon to decode them. (2) The joke you don’t recognize as such. (3) Laurel and Hardy. Abbott and Costello. Amos and Andy. Laverne and Shirley. For years popular comedy and irony have depended on a clear separation of powers. A comedic duo has a straight man and a comic. The comic delivers the punch lines, and the straight man acts as the audience’s surrogate, expressing rage, frustration, aplomb, whatever the appropriate emotion may be, freeing the audience to laugh and assuring them that the joke is not on them, that it’s safe to be amused and not outraged. Many new media such as online videos or mock websites are self-contained. In other words, the audience has no windsock, no surrogate, and no laugh track, nothing to indicate where the joke begins and ends—hence, hermetic irony. When Louis method tweets the bumper sticker slogans, he thinks it’s funny because he knows he is joking. As Sheriff points out, and demonstrates, no one unfamiliar with Louis or the immediate scenario is guaranteed to come to the same conclusion.
Holler—A small valley or hollow.
Incredible edibles—See alien technology.
Institutionalization—The spiritual and emotional ossification of higher education’s long-term inmates.
Institutionalized racism—Structural racism.
Internet—The bisexual digital incubus.
Irony—The use of metal where wood is expected.
Ishi—Man.
Johnny Appleseed—Semen.
The Juniors—(1) Euphemism for buttocks. (2) Littler versions of yourself.
Kerana—Because.
Ku Klux Klan—Social club dating back to mid-nineteenth-century America. Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America! A Message of Love NOT Hate!
Likening—(1) Industrious folk climb the ladder of success, others take the escalator (to paraphrase the great Biggie Smalls, RIP). Likening is your pass to the escalator. (2) See Michael Jackson. (3) See Beyoncé.
Lynching—(1) Ceremonial purification and sacrifice featuring a piñata stuffed with sweetbreads instead of sweetmeats. (2) Ritual offering to the New World gods of honor and justice.
Mengapa tidak—Why not?
Methuselah—You’ll have to ask him.
Micro-aggression—The plastic gun of racism; yo
u can sneak this one through security most of the time because it is comprised of nonracist ways of being racist, nonsexist ways of being sexist, and the like. E.g., You’re not like other BLANK people, or, You speak English very well.
Mondays—Be honest. Who likes them? You can be honest with me.
Oppression porn—(1) The depiction of poverty, oppression, and/or despair with the intent of provoking moral arousal. Frequently appears as digital media, literature, and pseudo-immersive favela tours. The most common side effect is a dangerously inflated sense of national and/or cultural superiority. (Fortunately this form of priapism does not require lancing, an icepack, ligation, or aspiration.) As with Internet porn, desensitization is a risk. See also favela tours. See also Sally Struthers.
Pen mawashi—That pen-spinning trick you wish you could do.
Performance—That time you expressed great thanks for the toe socks, lavishly praised a lackluster meal, or thanked your boss for the “feedback.”
Performative intervention—(1) Activism through acting. (2) Acting through activism.
Porque/¿Por qué?—Don’t know a Spanish speaker? Treat this as an invitation to meet one. Say hello to a busboy or a nanny or a Supreme Court Justice.
Reenactment—(1) See reenactor. (2) See Braggsville.
Residual affect—When colonial echoes haunt the station.
Sexicon—(1) A sexy-ass lexicon. (2) The practice of using big words where small would do.
Siddhartha—Like Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Biggie Smalls, Buddha had a birth name.
Slavery—Employment by another name.
Solid CO2—Dry ice. The magic engine of smoke machines. Metalheads, ravers, Wicked fans, salute!
So-Me—Social media.
Split in the bib—If you know what a bib is . . . and where a bib is worn . . . and what it covers . . . join us in this celebration of cleavage!
Suprasemiotic domain—The constellation of meaning-making practices engaged in when people communicate face-to-face, including speech, writing, gesture, and dance. The suprasemiotic domain is the communicative field within which people naturally function. Speech is more than words. Body talk.
University—(1) Colonialism’s most exquisite distillation. (2) The birthplace of spring break.
Uppity-Plessy—Portmanteau combining uppity and Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the states’ rights to segregate under the doctrine “separate but equal.”
U.S. of A.—See Braggsville.
Veil of Ignorance—The golden rule gussied up as a fancy theory.
Wormhole—(1) A shortcut through the space-time of virginity, the journey through which leaves the driver exalted and vehicle undefiled. (2) The dirty virgin superhighway.
Appendix 2
Works Cited
Adorno, T. (1985). On the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening. In A. Arato & E. Gebhardt (Eds.), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (pp. 270–99). New York, NY: Continuum.
Butler, J. (2000). Everything. New York, NY: Various Press.
Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. (S. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
. (1986). Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
. (1988). The Writing of History. (T. Conley, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Cowan, E. R. (2015). 16 Voices. Atlanta, GA: WXP.
Davenport, D. (2015). Residual affect: Race, micro-aggressions, micro-inequities, (autophagy) & BBQ in the contemporary Southern imagination at Six Flags. In T. G. Johnson (Ed.), Welcome to Braggsville. New York, NY: William Morrow.
De Haan, F. (1999). Evidentiality and epistemic modality: Setting boundaries. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 18, 83–101.
Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Griffin, R. (2009). Fundamentals of Management. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Johnson, T. G. (2010). Birth of a notion (From the great divide to the digital divide: Consilience in literacy studies during the age of the supra-semiotic domain). Unpublished MA thesis, UC Berkeley.
. (2011). Death of the straight man: New media literacies, aesthetic education and ambiguity in the ironic age. Unpublished proposal, UC Berkeley.
. (2012). Hold It ’Til It Hurts. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.
. (2015). Welcome to Braggsville. New York, NY: William Morrow.
Mahiri, J. (Forthcoming). Deconstructing race: Micro-cultures shifting the multicultural paradigm.
Ochs, E. (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 407–37). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Old Hitch (1825–1999). Cooking by Heartlight. Braggsville, GA: Handheld.
Acknowledgments
Welcome to Braggsville, aka Braggsville, aka BRAGGZ, aka B-Ville, aka WTB is indebted to many a literary Sherpa: Eleanor “I’ll Be the Judge of What’s Hard to Sell” Jackson, aka agent extraordinaire, who found a home for “this peculiar little book that I can’t quite describe”; Jessica “Make Them Say No” Williams, editor deluxe at William Morrow and sister by another mister; Katy “Clear-Eyed” Whitehead at HarperCollins UK/4th Estate; Jaimy “Libretto” Gordon; Sam “The Architect” Chang, quiet revolutionary; Connie “The Guru” Brothers; Karen “The Linguistinator” Russell; and Wiley “First Responder” Cash; and early readers Kate “Volte-Face” Sachs, Richard “Scorpio Rising” Katrovas, Jennifer “Mixmaster” Dubois, and Shane “Reed” Book.
Without saying—well, almost but not quite: U. C. “Fiat Lux” Berkeley; that beautiful woman who looks good in everything she wears; the Braggsville novel commission; LaCherriere, French polyglot factory; Vltava, both minor planet and river; Sheryl “Town Crier” Johnston; Saturn; Kelly “Eagle Eye” Farber; the tribe at HarperCollins/William Morrow, most notably Team BRAGGZ—Candice Carty-Williams, Mandy Kain, Lynn Grady, Kaitlin Harri, Jennifer Hart, Doug Jones, Morwenna Loughman, Tobly McSmith, Jonathan Pelham, Mary Ann Petyak, Clare Reihill, Kelly Rudolph, Liate Stehlik, Mary Beth Thomas; and the home teams at Iowa y WMU y OSUC y Berzerkeley y Atl y Nola.
And of course: my mom, Irene “The Matron Saint” English-Johnson; my dad, Tyrone “Esquire” Johnson; my sister, Ingrid “A Cappella Queen” Johnson-Lucuron; mon beau friere, Pierre “Waffle House” Johnson-Lucuron; the neph, Little Geronimo, for being a model of tenacity; Elizabeth “Tour de France” Cowan; and the old school ATL krewe (Click, Costarides, Dixon, Hazim, Mclean, O’Ree, Prieto, Price, Wages). Masquerades! Know that your contribution is not forgotten, even if you are not listed here.
About the Civil War, Sigmund Freud, Ishi, and “protecting and serving,” there is little left to say, except that half a haircut is no haircut at all.
About the Author
Photo by Elizabeth R. Cowan
BORN AND RAISED in New Orleans, T. GERONIMO JOHNSON received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his M.A. in language, literacy, and culture from UC Berkeley. He has taught writing and held fellowships—including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship—at Arizona State University, the University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, Western Michigan University, and Stanford. Johnson is also a curriculum designer for Bay Area nonprofits and the director of the UC Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Best New American Voices, Indiana Review, the Los Angeles Review, and Illuminations, among others. His first novel, Hold It ’Til It Hurts, was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Johnson is currently a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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