Return to Laughter


Book Description

This classic of anthropological literature is a dramatic, revealing account of an anthropologist’s first year in the field with a remote African tribe. Simply as a work of ethnographic interest, Return to Laughter provides deep insights into the culture of West Africa—me subtle web of its tribal life and the power of the institution of witchcraft. However, the author’s fictional approach gives the book its lasting appeal. She focuses on the human dimension of anthropology, recounting her personal triumphs and failures and documenting the profound changes she undergoes. As a result, her story becomes at once highly personal and universally recognizable. She has vividly brought to life the classic narrative of an outsider caught up and deeply involved in an utterly alien culture. “The first introspective account ever published of what it’s like to be a field worker among a primitive people.”—Margaret Mead




Return to Laughter


Book Description

A vivid and dramatic account of the experiences of an American anthropologist who lived with a primitive bush tribe in Africa. "Return to Laughter is a kind of modern Pilgrim's Progress." —David Riesman, from the Foreword




Laughter Out of Place


Book Description

Drawing on the author's experience in Brazil, this text provides a portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas - a portrait that challenges much of what we think we know about the 'culture of poverty'. It helps us understand the nature of joking and laughter in the shantytown.




The Book of Laughter and Forgetting


Book Description

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.




Laughter


Book Description

Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.




Return to Civility


Book Description

What a breath of fresh air! You and your team have articulated in one book what we are all so hungry for as a society. . . . We have forgotten how to respect and honor our fellow human beings as equal travelers on this journey. -Matthew D. Breitfelder, vice president of leadership development for MasterCard Worldwide This simple little book has a simple little theme, Act the way you want the world to be.Motivated by his experience at a concert during which a Grammy Award-winning musician was forced to stop mid-song in order to ask the audience to ratchet down its conversation, author and speaker John Sweeney rallied the troops at his theater to come up with 365 ways to lead a more considerate, and considered, life.#107If someone cuts you off in traffic, give the peace sign instead of the finger.Road rage creates unresolvable anger that you won't be able to shake. And at 60 mph, the other driver might think it's the finger anyway. It's a win-win situation.John Sweeney wears a lot of different hats. He owns the nation's oldest satirical comedy theater; he's an author, an improviser, a corporate trainer, a keynote speaker, and he has appeared on national television without a shirt-on more than one occasion, though he probably shouldn't.The Brave New Workshop contributors include: Lauren Anderson, Mike Fotis, Dave Jennings, Katy McEwen, Brian Aylmer, John Haynes, Lynn Lanners, Julia Schmidt, Joe Bozic, Dawn Hopkins, Jenni Lilledahl, Stephanie Scott, Erin Farmer, Elena Imaretska, and Caleb McEwen.




Not Without Laughter


Book Description

Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.




Through My Laughter and Tears


Book Description

Annette Stanzione was born into a Catholic-Italian family in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx in the 1950s. In Through My Laughter and Tears, Annette relays anecdotes from her childhood to her first job working for the FBI, becoming a paralegal at forty-seven, getting married and then divorced, raising two daughters, dating, living upstate for three decades, and then eventually returning home to the Bronx. Annette's story is an engaging mix of humor and gravitas as she wends her way through triumphs and difficulties. Although she's still looking for love -- and loving the process of finding it -- she perseveres with charm, wit, and warmth. You'll be drawn into Annette's world and wish she was your best friend.




No Laughter Here


Book Description

In this groundbreaking novel, Coretta Scott King Award winner Rita Williams-Garcia uses her vividly realistic voice to highlight an often taboo practice that affects millions of girls around the world every year, and to explore a perspective not often depicted in YA fiction. Even though they were born in different countries, Akilah and Victoria are true best friends. But Victoria has been acting strange ever since she returned from her summer in Nigeria, where she had a special coming-of-age ceremony. Why does proud Victoria, named for a queen, slouch at her desk and answer the teacher's questions in a whisper? And why won't she laugh with Akilah anymore? Akilah's name means "intelligent," and she is determined to find out what's wrong. But when she learns the terrible secret Victoria is hiding, she suddenly has even more questions. The only problem is, they might not be the kind that have answers.




If You Want to Make God Laugh


Book Description

A rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries. In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, seventeen-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life. Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's what she can't have that leads to her breakdown. Meanwhile, in Zaire, a disgraced former nun, Delilah, grapples with a past that refuses to stay buried. When these personal crises send both middle-aged women back to their rural hometown to heal, the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby upends everything, challenging their lifelong beliefs about race, motherhood, and the power of the past. As the mystery surrounding the infant grows, the complicated lives of Zodwa, Ruth, and Delilah become inextricably linked. What follows is a mesmerizing look at family and identity that asks: How far will the human heart go to protect itself and the ones it loves?