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There Are Two Responses To Really Awful Things. One Is To Lament And Say, "oh My God, Oh Lord." And The Other Is To Laugh At It A Little Bit, Try Your Best To Deal With It And, If You Can, Forget About It As Soon As Possible.

-James McBride

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There Are Two Responses

James McBride

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There Are Two Responses To Really Awful Things. One Is To Lament And Say, "oh My God, Oh Lord." And The Other Is To Laugh At It A Little Bit, Try Your Best To Deal With It And, If You Can, Forget About It As Soon As Possible.

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My Black Friends Never Asked Me How Much Money I Made, Or What School My Children Went To, Or Anything Like That. They Just Said, "come As You Are."

I Asked Her If I Was Black Or White. She Replied "you Are A Human Being. Educate Yourself Or You'll Be A Nobody!

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I Think Comedy Allows People To Accept The More Difficult Parts Of History. And History, If It's Presented Wrong, Is Just Very Depressing, Particularly The History Of Slavery. If Slavery Is Presented Properly, It's A Great Story. But I Think That Within The Commercial World Of Storytelling In Which I Live, There Haven't Been Many Strong Works That Discuss Slavery In Ways That Are Palatable And Funny And Interesting To The Reader.

You Know What Needs To Be Done When You're A Writer. You Know What The Job Is, Particularly If You're An African American Writer, Or If You Deal With People, Or If Your Subjects Are Poor People Or People Who Need Voice. So You Don't Really Need To Know Whether Or Not You Are Doing The Right Thing. What You Have To Be Wary Of If You're Doing The Right Thing To The Right Level That Will Surpass Your Own Life. I'm Hoping That My Work Will Surpass My Own Life.

The Basic Thing Is To Be Humble, And Pretend You're A Bartender In The Tavern Of Life. Don't Get Too Comfortable And Don't Really Listen To Anybody Else. Don't Stand Around With A Bunch Of Writers And Talk About Writing. You Know When You See Plumbers At A Plumbers Convention, Usually They're Not Talking About Plumbing: They're Talking About Whatever It Is That Two Men Happen To Talk About. They're Talking About Sports, Their Wives And Children. I Just Tell My Students, Don't Talk About Writing Too Much, Just Go Out And Do It. Find Out Whatever You Need To Get To The Mainland.

What Humor Allows You To Do Is To Let The Past Go With Less Pain. It's A Healing Element. It Releases Some Of The Pain From The Shotgun Wound.

Writing For Me Is Cutting Out The Fat And Getting To The Meaning.

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I Just Read History Books. I Read Nothing But History Books. They Have So Much To Give; I Wish I'd Majored In History In College.

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I Felt Like A Tinker Toy Kid Building My Own Self Out Of One Of Those Toy Building Sets; For As She Laid Her Life Before Me, I Reassembled The Tableau Of Her Words Like A Picture Puzzle, And As I Did, So My Own Life Was Rebuilt.

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I Come To The Understanding That Maybe What Was On The Inside Was More Important, And That Your Outer Covering Didn't Count So Much As Folks Thought It Did, Colored Or White, Man Or Woman.

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As A Journalist, I Never Critiqued Anyone. I Never Review Books. I've Never Felt Qualified As A Musician To Say Whether Someone Is A Good Musician Or A Bad Musician. What Happens With Black Writers And Black Artists Is That If You're Critiqued, For Example, By A Black Historian Who Wants To Get His Name On The Cover Of "the New York Times," And He Says Something, Like, Wacky, Well, He'll Get His Name On The Cover Of "the New York Times" And He Might Get Tenure, And Your Career Suffers.

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I'm One Of The Few Black Writers, Or African American Writers, Who Managed To Work My Way Through The System So That It Has Allowed Me To Speak In A Kind Of Free Way. But Most African American Writers Don't Have That. They Don't Have That Opportunity, They Don't Have That.

African American

There Are Some Really Great Books That Have Been Written About Slavery, But I Don't Think That The Discourse About It In Society Has Been Very Accurate Or Healthy. I Don't Think We've Come Up With Ways To Tell It That Don't Insult People Or Hit Them In The Wrong Way. Part Of The Problem Is That Most People Don't Really Understand What Slavery Was Anyway. Most White People Didn't Own Slaves. Slavery Was A Way Of Life, Just Like Driving Cars Is A Way Of Life Now. It Doesn't Mean That It Was Right.

But What Difference Does It Make? ... When You're Mixed, You See How Absurd This Business Of Race Is.

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