Make 'em Laugh

We are pleased to bring you another salon after our successful Push/Precious/Erasure salon back in December (we hope that some of you used our salon kit to have your own!). We felt like we needed a little levity after the sorrowful Push so this time we've embarked on a salon with two sharply funny and insightful new novels: Big Machine by Victor LaValle and God Says No by James Hannaham. We wanted to offer some tools that we hope to use--and that you can use too--if you'd like to discuss these books--and the notion of humor in African-American literature--with some of your friends wherever you are.

First up: Salon 101. Detailed tips to throw your own salon, courtesy of Guilt and Pleasure .

Here's an essay about African-American humor by Paul Beatty to create a lens to view the novels through (It's from his book, Hokum: An anthology of African-American humor.)

And here's a bit about each writer: Victor on Wikipedia, an interview with him, and a piece from the Wall Street Journal. And if you want to hear from him, check out this NPR interview.

Here's James in Salon and a review from the Austinist (James got his MFA from the University of Texas in Austin.) And here's a sample of the kinds of online "ex-gay" testimonies that inspired the novel.

So check it all out and have a salon of their own--and if you want to spread it out, just do one book at a time! We'll let you know when the podcast of the event is up on the PEN website.