What do you think?
Rate this book
Me Funny
Humor has always been a central part of North American Aboriginal culture. Most settlers just didn’t get the joke, and a stern, unyielding profile of “the Indian” came to dominate the mainstream imagination. Indians, it was believed, never laughed. But Indians themselves always knew better.
As an award-winning playwright, columnist, and comedy-sketch creator, Drew Hayden Taylor has spent fifteen years writing and researching Aboriginal humor. For Me Funny, he invited a stellar cast of writers from a variety of fields — among them such celebrated wordsmiths as Thomas King, Louise Profeit-LeBlanc and Tomson Highway — to take a look at what makes Aboriginal humor tick. Their irreverent, insightful and often hilarious contributions examine the use of humour in areas as diverse as stand-up comedy, fiction, visual art, drama, performance, poetry, traditional storytelling, and education.
Want to know where you stand on the Ladder of Status? How Johnny Six Toes got his nickname? What it's like to be a green-eyed Mohawk? Why Cree is the funniest language on earth? The answers are all in this highly enjoyable collection.
As an award-winning playwright, columnist, and comedy-sketch creator, Drew Hayden Taylor has spent fifteen years writing and researching Aboriginal humor. For Me Funny, he invited a stellar cast of writers from a variety of fields — among them such celebrated wordsmiths as Thomas King, Louise Profeit-LeBlanc and Tomson Highway — to take a look at what makes Aboriginal humor tick. Their irreverent, insightful and often hilarious contributions examine the use of humour in areas as diverse as stand-up comedy, fiction, visual art, drama, performance, poetry, traditional storytelling, and education.
Want to know where you stand on the Ladder of Status? How Johnny Six Toes got his nickname? What it's like to be a green-eyed Mohawk? Why Cree is the funniest language on earth? The answers are all in this highly enjoyable collection.
200 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2006
18 people are currently reading
430 people want to read
About the author
Drew Hayden Taylor
58 books296 followersDuring the last thirty years of his life, Drew Hayden Taylor has done many things, most of which he is proud of. An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, he has worn many hats in his literary career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., to being Artistic Director of Canada's premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. He has been an award-winning playwright (with over 70 productions of his work), a journalist/columnist (appearing regularly in several Canadian newspapers and magazines), short-story writer, novelist, television scriptwriter, and has worked on over 17 documentaries exploring the Native experience. Most notably, he wrote and directed REDSKINS, TRICKSTERS AND PUPPY STEW, a documentary on Native humour for the National Film Board of Canada.
He has traveled to sixteen countries around the world, spreading the gospel of Native literature to the world. Through many of his books, most notably the four volume set of the FUNNY, YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE ONE series, he has tried to educate and inform the world about issues that reflect, celebrate, and interfere in the lives of Canada's First Nations.
Self described as a contemporary story teller in what ever form, last summer saw the production of the third season of MIXED BLESSINGS, a television comedy series he co-created and is the head writer for. This fall, a made-for-tv movie he wrote, based on his Governor General's nominated play was nominated for three Gemini Awards, including Best Movie. Originally it aired on APTN and opened the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, and the Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton.
The last few years has seen him proudly serve as the Writer-In-Residence at the University of Michigan and the University of Western Ontario. In 2007, Annick Press published his first Novel, THE NIGHT WANDERER: A Native Gothic Novel, a teen novel about an Ojibway vampire. Two years ago, his non-fiction book exploring the world of Native sexuality, called ME SEXY, was published by Douglas & McIntyre. It is a follow up to his highly successful book on Native humour, ME FUNNY.
The author of 20 books in total, he is eagerly awaiting the publication of his new novel in February by Random House as "One of the new faces of fiction for 2010", titled MOTORCYCLES AND SWEETGRASS. In January, his new play, DEAD WHITE WRITER ON THE FLOOR, opens at Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay. Currently, he is working on a new play titled CREES IN THE CARRIBEAN, and a collection of essays called POSTCARDS FROM THE FOUR DIRECTIONS. More importantly, he is desperately trying to find the time to do his laundry.
Oddly enough, the thing his mother is most proud of is his ability to make spaghetti from scratch.
He has traveled to sixteen countries around the world, spreading the gospel of Native literature to the world. Through many of his books, most notably the four volume set of the FUNNY, YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE ONE series, he has tried to educate and inform the world about issues that reflect, celebrate, and interfere in the lives of Canada's First Nations.
Self described as a contemporary story teller in what ever form, last summer saw the production of the third season of MIXED BLESSINGS, a television comedy series he co-created and is the head writer for. This fall, a made-for-tv movie he wrote, based on his Governor General's nominated play was nominated for three Gemini Awards, including Best Movie. Originally it aired on APTN and opened the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, and the Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton.
The last few years has seen him proudly serve as the Writer-In-Residence at the University of Michigan and the University of Western Ontario. In 2007, Annick Press published his first Novel, THE NIGHT WANDERER: A Native Gothic Novel, a teen novel about an Ojibway vampire. Two years ago, his non-fiction book exploring the world of Native sexuality, called ME SEXY, was published by Douglas & McIntyre. It is a follow up to his highly successful book on Native humour, ME FUNNY.
The author of 20 books in total, he is eagerly awaiting the publication of his new novel in February by Random House as "One of the new faces of fiction for 2010", titled MOTORCYCLES AND SWEETGRASS. In January, his new play, DEAD WHITE WRITER ON THE FLOOR, opens at Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay. Currently, he is working on a new play titled CREES IN THE CARRIBEAN, and a collection of essays called POSTCARDS FROM THE FOUR DIRECTIONS. More importantly, he is desperately trying to find the time to do his laundry.
Oddly enough, the thing his mother is most proud of is his ability to make spaghetti from scratch.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
March 3, 2022
A collection of eleven essays, written by First Nations scholars, writers and comedians (some contributors are all three). While some essays are more informal and witty; others take a more academic approach. There is some overlap and repetition; as well, some essays contradict the assertions of another.
What is Native humour? Does it even exist? Is is based on survival, community or something else? Everyone has an opinion, and many of these opinions are hilarious.
Between essays there are selections of jokes, many of which might be offensive to the woke crowd, but if the jokes are coming from "Native North American Aboriginal First Nations Indian People", this collection tells us that must be okay, under the circumstances, for research purposes.
As a whole, this book provides much insight into the use of humour to improve social cohesion, and to draw people together, rather than divide them.
What is Native humour? Does it even exist? Is is based on survival, community or something else? Everyone has an opinion, and many of these opinions are hilarious.
Between essays there are selections of jokes, many of which might be offensive to the woke crowd, but if the jokes are coming from "Native North American Aboriginal First Nations Indian People", this collection tells us that must be okay, under the circumstances, for research purposes.
As a whole, this book provides much insight into the use of humour to improve social cohesion, and to draw people together, rather than divide them.
February 5, 2016
This was such a good book. My favorite is Kristina Fagan's essay on how Native humor relates to trauma, survival, conformity and violence is eye-opening and it provides concrete examples from Native literature. Janice Acoose and Natasha Beeds have an interesting conversational essay about the Trickster, the embodiment of all kinds of humor. Drew Hayden Taylor and Karen Froman tackle the mixed-native issue, while comedian Don Kelly gives insight into his comedy routine. And there is more discussed here so wholly recommend this book.
August 24, 2018
I had originally expected this to be more along the lines of humorous stories rather than the essays about indigenous humour that it actually consists of. There were still plenty of jokes and stories interspersed throughout to lighten things up. My favourites were And Now, Ladies and Gentlemen by stand-up comic Don Kelly, which included generous portions of his stand-up act, and Why Cree is the Funniest of All Languages by playwright/musician Tomson Highway.
August 3, 2017
I laughed, I wondered, I was bored, I was entertained and I learned a lot.
Not all essays were to my liking. Some are more based on fact listings or quoting others. Most are explanatory about what Native Humor is and what it isn't. Only a few are funny in itself.
Best: the examples in betweet the chapters were very entertaining.
registered book at bookcrossing.com: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...
Not all essays were to my liking. Some are more based on fact listings or quoting others. Most are explanatory about what Native Humor is and what it isn't. Only a few are funny in itself.
Best: the examples in betweet the chapters were very entertaining.
registered book at bookcrossing.com: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...
October 18, 2025
Interesting compilation of essays on Indigenous humour, collected by Drew Hayden Taylor. Some of these essays were fairly academic, think thesis material, but some were really funny. All were entertaining in their own way while trying to explain what "Indian" humour is, what makes it funny, and why it is funny. Some great stuff by Tomson Highway, and Thomas King, both prolific Indigenous writers.
(I read this after reading 52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing, by David Robertson. Read more books by Indigenous writers!!!)
(I read this after reading 52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing, by David Robertson. Read more books by Indigenous writers!!!)
October 26, 2017
Me Funny, edited by Ojibway playwright and humorist Drew Hayden Taylor, is a collection of meditations and ruminations on the subject of Indigenous humour. Many of the contributors are Indigenous Canadians, writers and playwrights engaged in the creation of the very art which is the subject of the collection.
I found this collection among the Toronto Public Library's online ebook offerings. I was browsing their Indigenous section and somehow it seemed that after reading two books in quick succession that focused on the oppression of Indigenous peoples, I wanted to read something from the other side, something that looked at Indigenous survival - and what speaks more to the survival of a people and their culture than their laughter.
I was not completely unfamiliar with the territory when I chose this book - I've read some of the work of Drew Hayden Taylor, and Tomson Highway, and Thomas King before now, enough to have gotten a glimpse of what indigenous comedic writing can be like, and know that it makes me laugh, and makes me think. As did many of the contributions to this volume.
Among the working comics, writers and playwrights who share their perspectives are Ojibway stand-up comic Don Kelly, who offers thoughts on the nature of Indigenous comedy within the context of the Canadian comedy circuit, interspersed with excepts from his routines, and playwright Ian Ferguson, who talks about the differences between Indigenous humour intended for mixed audiences, and "our jokes" - humour by and for Indigenous peoples.
In "Whacking the Indigenous Funny Bone," Taylor provides some of his own perspectives on the nature of Indigenous humour, with particular focus on what has been one of the recurring themes of his own work, relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
In "Ruby Lips," Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, a Northern Tutchone storyteller, offers a poignant story, sour and sweet, about her characters Johnny Silverfox and Mary Malcolm, who embody both the tragedy and the drive for survival that are so often interwoven in Indigenous life and literature.
Janice Acoosta (Cree/Métis) and Natasha Beeds (Cree/Afro-Caribbean) discuss "Cree-ative" comedy - with notable emphasis on the Trickster figure - in the form of a two-handed play/dialogue that veers wildly between interpersonal humour, satire, and detailed analysis of the comic writing of Cree writer Paul Seesequasis.
Cherokee writer and scholar Thomas King interleaves a discussion of the difficulties of defining Indigenous humour with passages from his popular CBC radio comedy show, The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour.
In "Why Cree Is the Funniest of All Languages," an elegiac meditation on language and mythology, Tomson Highway talks about the soul - and the gut-level presence - of Indigenous humour.
Mohawk academic and parent Karen Froman, in "Buffalo Tales and Academic Trails" talks about her own uses of humour in teaching, both at the university level, and as a volunteer resource person on Indigenous issues at her children's school.
In one of the few pieces to address visual comedy, Alan J. Ryan's "One Big Indian," analyses both the creative process in Bill Powless' satirical paintings of Indigenous people, and the nature of public reaction to the paintings and the questions they raise about Indigenous representation for the white gaze.
Métis scholar Kristina Fagan's essay "Teasing, Tolerating, Teaching - Laughter and Community in Canadian Literature" examines the ways in which Indigenous writers have portrayed and used humour to strengthen community and cohesiveness - both by ambiguous example, and by teasing, even humiliation, as a form of coersion. She illustrates this through a discussion of the prevalence of the joker or jester figure - often an elder, but hardly a serious and sage advisor - who simultaneously defuses tension, transmutes fear or tragedy to laughter, and provides multiple lessons, sometimes contradictory or self-subversive, to be teased out of his or her words and actions.
As Mirjam Hirch notes in "Subversive Humour - Canadian Native Playwrights' Winning Weapon of Resistance," it has only been in recent decades that white observers were aware of the existence of Indigenous humour. Early writers on the subject depicted the indigenous peoples of North America as serious, placid or warlike by turns, but never funny. This view, however, has been thoroughly discredited with the emergence of a body of Indigenous humour, much of it expressed through theatre as the literary form closest to traditional storytelling forms. Hirch traces the roots of Indigenous humour from pre-colonial sacred rituals involving reversals and 'tricksters' and notes, as other contributors have, the importance of teasing in Indigenous cultures as a means of social control. She also talks, as others have, about how Indigenous people have used humour as a way to cope with and heal from trauma, and as a way of 'retaliating' against their oppressors without incurring punitive reaction.
Sprinkled throughout the volume are a series of jokes that the editor has written/collected/curated under the collective title "Astutely Selected Ethno-Based Examples of Cultural Jocularity and Racial Comicalness."
I don't know if I could do any better defining Indigenous humour now than I could before reading this, but I certainly enjoyed it, and more than one passage left me smiling, even laughing. Maybe that's the best reason for reading it.
I found this collection among the Toronto Public Library's online ebook offerings. I was browsing their Indigenous section and somehow it seemed that after reading two books in quick succession that focused on the oppression of Indigenous peoples, I wanted to read something from the other side, something that looked at Indigenous survival - and what speaks more to the survival of a people and their culture than their laughter.
I was not completely unfamiliar with the territory when I chose this book - I've read some of the work of Drew Hayden Taylor, and Tomson Highway, and Thomas King before now, enough to have gotten a glimpse of what indigenous comedic writing can be like, and know that it makes me laugh, and makes me think. As did many of the contributions to this volume.
Among the working comics, writers and playwrights who share their perspectives are Ojibway stand-up comic Don Kelly, who offers thoughts on the nature of Indigenous comedy within the context of the Canadian comedy circuit, interspersed with excepts from his routines, and playwright Ian Ferguson, who talks about the differences between Indigenous humour intended for mixed audiences, and "our jokes" - humour by and for Indigenous peoples.
In "Whacking the Indigenous Funny Bone," Taylor provides some of his own perspectives on the nature of Indigenous humour, with particular focus on what has been one of the recurring themes of his own work, relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
In "Ruby Lips," Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, a Northern Tutchone storyteller, offers a poignant story, sour and sweet, about her characters Johnny Silverfox and Mary Malcolm, who embody both the tragedy and the drive for survival that are so often interwoven in Indigenous life and literature.
Janice Acoosta (Cree/Métis) and Natasha Beeds (Cree/Afro-Caribbean) discuss "Cree-ative" comedy - with notable emphasis on the Trickster figure - in the form of a two-handed play/dialogue that veers wildly between interpersonal humour, satire, and detailed analysis of the comic writing of Cree writer Paul Seesequasis.
Cherokee writer and scholar Thomas King interleaves a discussion of the difficulties of defining Indigenous humour with passages from his popular CBC radio comedy show, The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour.
In "Why Cree Is the Funniest of All Languages," an elegiac meditation on language and mythology, Tomson Highway talks about the soul - and the gut-level presence - of Indigenous humour.
Mohawk academic and parent Karen Froman, in "Buffalo Tales and Academic Trails" talks about her own uses of humour in teaching, both at the university level, and as a volunteer resource person on Indigenous issues at her children's school.
In one of the few pieces to address visual comedy, Alan J. Ryan's "One Big Indian," analyses both the creative process in Bill Powless' satirical paintings of Indigenous people, and the nature of public reaction to the paintings and the questions they raise about Indigenous representation for the white gaze.
Métis scholar Kristina Fagan's essay "Teasing, Tolerating, Teaching - Laughter and Community in Canadian Literature" examines the ways in which Indigenous writers have portrayed and used humour to strengthen community and cohesiveness - both by ambiguous example, and by teasing, even humiliation, as a form of coersion. She illustrates this through a discussion of the prevalence of the joker or jester figure - often an elder, but hardly a serious and sage advisor - who simultaneously defuses tension, transmutes fear or tragedy to laughter, and provides multiple lessons, sometimes contradictory or self-subversive, to be teased out of his or her words and actions.
As Mirjam Hirch notes in "Subversive Humour - Canadian Native Playwrights' Winning Weapon of Resistance," it has only been in recent decades that white observers were aware of the existence of Indigenous humour. Early writers on the subject depicted the indigenous peoples of North America as serious, placid or warlike by turns, but never funny. This view, however, has been thoroughly discredited with the emergence of a body of Indigenous humour, much of it expressed through theatre as the literary form closest to traditional storytelling forms. Hirch traces the roots of Indigenous humour from pre-colonial sacred rituals involving reversals and 'tricksters' and notes, as other contributors have, the importance of teasing in Indigenous cultures as a means of social control. She also talks, as others have, about how Indigenous people have used humour as a way to cope with and heal from trauma, and as a way of 'retaliating' against their oppressors without incurring punitive reaction.
Sprinkled throughout the volume are a series of jokes that the editor has written/collected/curated under the collective title "Astutely Selected Ethno-Based Examples of Cultural Jocularity and Racial Comicalness."
I don't know if I could do any better defining Indigenous humour now than I could before reading this, but I certainly enjoyed it, and more than one passage left me smiling, even laughing. Maybe that's the best reason for reading it.
October 23, 2020
My bad for not reading the glaringly obvious subtitle that would have explained this was not a book of humor essays, but a treatise on the critical theory behind North American aboriginal humor...aka: this book is not funny and mostly made me sad. I appreciate this exists, and hope it reaches its intended audience, but unfortunately I just could not get into it at all. Not real interested in the critical analysis of laughs in lieu of IRL laughs, especially in 2020, but academics-knock yourself out.
February 3, 2019
Mixed collection of pure humor essays down to papers seemingly written for a Master's dissertation; didn't walk away with a lot of insights or interesting takes on Native Canadian humor and it was a real slog to get through
August 21, 2018
Native Sensibilities
Interesting collection of pieces on the state of Canadian Indian humour, some analytic, others just plain funny. I especially enjoyed the discussion of Bill Powless's controversial 1984 painting "Indian's Summer" featuring a fat Indian man in swim shorts, male boobs hanging over his chest wearing a silly too small umbrella hat and holding a melting popsicle, posed relaxed with an enigmatic but satisfied smile.
Comedy derives from tension, tragedy and conflict and many of the comics draw on misconceptions that non-natives have of the native populations, the historic dispossession of their land, relationships with government treaties and issues of mixed heritages. Don Kelly and Drew Haden Taylor both touch on political correctness and the notion of an "in" joke, in the sense that someone on the inside of a culture can give themselves permission to tell a self deprecating joke whereas someone from outside the culture cannot. Another source touched on is the cultural motif of Trickster/Raven/Coyote and the tradition of native storytelling. Mirjam Hirch in her essay "Subversive Humour" takes that insight into native theatre with a discussion of plays such as "The Rez Sisters" and "Dry Lips Ought to Move to Kapuskasin"; Thomas King offers a script from his hilarious Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour, replete with commentary on what he thinks he's trying to accomplish with each scene - as a fan it's always fun to get inside the creative process.
Honourable mention should go to Jan Acoose & Natsha Beeds for their dialog "Cree-atively Speaking" which on first reading I didn't care for because of the repetitive punning on the word "Cree", usually followed by "ative", but I could see it working as a performance piece. As for playwright Thompson Highway's conjecture that "Cree is the Funniest of All Languages", he also states in Me Sexy that "Cree is the Sexiest of All Languages", and if you read his short story concerning Old Man Coyote, Coyote Woman and the origin of sex, I have to agree that he's right on both counts.
Interesting collection of pieces on the state of Canadian Indian humour, some analytic, others just plain funny. I especially enjoyed the discussion of Bill Powless's controversial 1984 painting "Indian's Summer" featuring a fat Indian man in swim shorts, male boobs hanging over his chest wearing a silly too small umbrella hat and holding a melting popsicle, posed relaxed with an enigmatic but satisfied smile.
Comedy derives from tension, tragedy and conflict and many of the comics draw on misconceptions that non-natives have of the native populations, the historic dispossession of their land, relationships with government treaties and issues of mixed heritages. Don Kelly and Drew Haden Taylor both touch on political correctness and the notion of an "in" joke, in the sense that someone on the inside of a culture can give themselves permission to tell a self deprecating joke whereas someone from outside the culture cannot. Another source touched on is the cultural motif of Trickster/Raven/Coyote and the tradition of native storytelling. Mirjam Hirch in her essay "Subversive Humour" takes that insight into native theatre with a discussion of plays such as "The Rez Sisters" and "Dry Lips Ought to Move to Kapuskasin"; Thomas King offers a script from his hilarious Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour, replete with commentary on what he thinks he's trying to accomplish with each scene - as a fan it's always fun to get inside the creative process.
Honourable mention should go to Jan Acoose & Natsha Beeds for their dialog "Cree-atively Speaking" which on first reading I didn't care for because of the repetitive punning on the word "Cree", usually followed by "ative", but I could see it working as a performance piece. As for playwright Thompson Highway's conjecture that "Cree is the Funniest of All Languages", he also states in Me Sexy that "Cree is the Sexiest of All Languages", and if you read his short story concerning Old Man Coyote, Coyote Woman and the origin of sex, I have to agree that he's right on both counts.
August 27, 2017
This book had some good jokes a few good stories, and some that didn't carry a message was too specific for easy understanding. This is a serious attempt to understand the important question why are native people so funny? Problem is most of the contributing writers are themselves professional comedians and not a real representative cross-section of the target population, so to make my own very small contribution to this topic I offer up my wife's latest cell message chat;
My brothers sorry I can't join u this Saturday I have an AA speaking commitment but pls let me know for next time
Who this (Jimmy)
Chris
from? (jimmy)
Who dis? (Eddie)
Rob (jimmy)
Worry About it (Rock&Sweat)
Who is this is (Louie)
This is a group Tex from Sweat (Louie)
JK (Rock&Sweat)
I'm going to kick ur asses it's Chris from tule river bitches
Who say who dat when I say who dat, who dat jk (Eddie)
Lol good one Chris!!!!(Jimmie)
My Mom Called Me A Bitch Once, Once.(Rock&Sweat)
😳
((They go on like that all the time I guess the answer to the question why are natives funny it's because they practice it all the time)
My brothers sorry I can't join u this Saturday I have an AA speaking commitment but pls let me know for next time
Who this (Jimmy)
Chris
from? (jimmy)
Who dis? (Eddie)
Rob (jimmy)
Worry About it (Rock&Sweat)
Who is this is (Louie)
This is a group Tex from Sweat (Louie)
JK (Rock&Sweat)
I'm going to kick ur asses it's Chris from tule river bitches
Who say who dat when I say who dat, who dat jk (Eddie)
Lol good one Chris!!!!(Jimmie)
My Mom Called Me A Bitch Once, Once.(Rock&Sweat)
😳
((They go on like that all the time I guess the answer to the question why are natives funny it's because they practice it all the time)
September 23, 2014
I completely forgot to add this book after I read it in September for the First Peoples English Literature course I'm developing. I quite enjoyed many of these essays; Drew Hayden Taylor (a funny man, himself) has chosen several of the most well-known Aboriginal humour writers/performers in Canada to contribute essays for this collection, and many of the essays are both funny and insightful. They are a little bit uneven, but I thought the following were particular standouts: Kristina Fagan's essay about laughter and community, Karen Froman's essay about humour and academia, and Thomas King's essay about the CBC Radio One show he wrote and acted in, The Dead Dog Cafe.
I also laughed my head off at many of the jokes in the "intermissions" interspersed throughout the book.
I also laughed my head off at many of the jokes in the "intermissions" interspersed throughout the book.
May 24, 2015
I'm a big fan of books of essays or short stories. The most beautiful thing about this book to me was how every single essay took a different form, addressed a different topic, or used multimedia in an interesting way. My favourite essay in this book has to be "Why Cree is the Funniest of All Languages". The words on the page (visually) just make me giggle. Some of the essays are more academic. Some of them are more casual. This is a fabulous introductory reader to Indigenous literature that really answers the "Who", "What", "Where", "When", "Why", and "How", of a particular form of humour.
October 30, 2018
A collection of essays featuring diverse FN funny folk, from standup comedian Don Kelly to playwrights Tomson Highway and Drew Haden Taylor, and writers such as Thomas King, storyteller Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, and educator Kristina Fagan.
A semi-formal study of FN humour that will have you laughing out loud.
A semi-formal study of FN humour that will have you laughing out loud.
June 1, 2008
I found some of this book a little too academic. It was a collection of pieces dealing with Native humour, and some of the commonalities of humour with different aboriginal groups. Some parts were great, others not so much, but I'm still glad I read it.
March 27, 2010
This was structured as a book *about* humour rather than a book *of* humour, but most of it was funny itself and almost all of it was interesting. The articles ranged from light reading to fairly academic.
January 22, 2016
This was a good book with some valid points I had never considered and some I had. It is a series of essays and some humour bits on North American Aboriginal humour.
Well compiled and structured.
This was a library loan.
Well compiled and structured.
This was a library loan.
August 14, 2017
Read about 70% - skipped some entries because they were dull like "Teasing, Tolerating, Teaching" which talks about how infrequently Native humor is interpreted and then goes on to interpret it for 22 pages.
December 21, 2017
Not easy to be serious about humour, but most of these essays succeed. Those written by Thomas King, Tomson Highway, Ian Ferguson, Karen Froman and Drew Hayden Taylor were particularly amusing and interesting.
March 31, 2010
A collection of essay on Indian humor. One was really boring, several were just ok and a couple were hysterical. Loved Tomson Highway's essay.
April 16, 2008
so far, it's not as funny as it is...well...hmmm.
I gave up on this book. I just couldn't get through it.
I gave up on this book. I just couldn't get through it.
October 8, 2013
Seriously, this guy is an excellent writer! Witty, playful, honest, and blunt - but in a humourous way. I would read a suppository box label if this guy wrote it! Got to get "Me Sexy" next!
April 12, 2014
More non-fiction than I expected, but still a worthwhile read. An interesting perspective which we all have go consider. Recommended.
July 21, 2020
Some great laughs. Perspective
August 29, 2021
Found it stimulating and educational. Humour, as a means of survival ... all through the over five centuries of being tossed aside and not recognized even as humans...!! Interesting that while the "pale faces" only saw the stoic, unsmiling, grim Indian, the indigenous peoples would privately crack jokes at the former's expense and a mirthful, funny side to them that has not ever been made visible.
Also, learnt that while language and customs vary tremendously between different indigenous communities and peoples, humour remained a constant - a unifying emotion and force.
Also, learnt that while language and customs vary tremendously between different indigenous communities and peoples, humour remained a constant - a unifying emotion and force.
September 6, 2021
Indigenous humour is hard to pin down or define, as you might expect, since there are so menu different Indigenous cultures, but it is noticeable that Indigenous humour is grounded in Indigenous world views, in resistance to oppression, and in a sense of community and solidarity. The figure of the Trickster is important too.
The book alternates between theorizing about Indigenous humour and telling jokes and funny stories. It has contributions from a number of different authors including Drew Hayden Taylor and Thomas King. I really enjoyed it.
The book alternates between theorizing about Indigenous humour and telling jokes and funny stories. It has contributions from a number of different authors including Drew Hayden Taylor and Thomas King. I really enjoyed it.
July 20, 2020
I read this book in stages. The early essays are academic in nature and I wasn't doing them justice by reading them one after another. So, I would read one or two essays and then, read an entirely different book and repeat. However, one third into the book and I didn't put it down.
Interesting balance of perspectives and writing styles. Well done Taylor.
Interesting balance of perspectives and writing styles. Well done Taylor.
September 7, 2021
From both the essays and the examples it appears the key to being a First Nations humorist is at the start of the joke. Instead of saying something like, Two old guys were sitting on a porch and one turns to the other and says… You would say, Two old Navaho were sitting on a porch and one turns to the other and says…
November 25, 2021
This was a book of essays by various writers and as a result, it was a little uneven. Some of them were quite funny, some of them were quite educational, and some of the were dry and boring. Overall it was an interesting book and I'm glad I read it, but there were at least two, maybe three essays that were a grind to get through.
September 2, 2025
lots of essays in a somewhat short collection—covers a lot of material. but I felt like a lot of the essays ended right as they were starting to make an argument about Indigenous humor.
first and final essay are fantastic.
Birchbark purchase 🤯
first and final essay are fantastic.
Birchbark purchase 🤯
December 16, 2018
Some chapters were hilarious. Some chapters were academic analyses of indigenous comedy.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews