Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • "Laffin' fit ter kill" : black humor in the fiction of William Wells Brown and Charles W. Chesnutt
  • The conjurer recoils : slavery in Richard Pryor's performances and Chappelle's Show
  • Conjuring the mysteries of slavery : voodoo, fetishism, and stereotype in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada
  • "A comedy of the grotesque" : Robert Colescott, Kara Walker, and the iconography of slavery
  • The tragicomedy of slavery in Suzan-Lori Parks's early plays.