It's about blackface in America, which I just thought was one of the weirdest things ever. It was actually I think the most popular form of Western entertainment for well over 100 years; and this is white people pretending to be black people for the entertainment of other white people 'cause black people weren't allowed to watch it or participate in it.
Though the first talkie, Al Jolson in the talking scene was him in blackface singing "Mammy;" and then there's of course Shirley Temple movies. She's always in blackface tap dancing with Mr. Bojangles. So it's like this very odd cultural thing that has really fascinated me. I've actually read several other books about this. Interesting thing about this one is he sort of talks about not he talks about the racism of it, of course, but he also talks about how it actually was sort of a cultural give and take; and he talks about how when Irish immigrants came over here, they often were found themselves as virtual slave labor alongside blacks. They taught each other stuff. Actually he says he thinks that's where tap dance came from, this sort of Irish teaching the buck and wing to black people, and black people taking that and putting their own spin on it. So that was the interesting thing about this book.
I would have liked it better I think if he'd done a history of it, but it was mainly his breezy take, I guess you would say. He goes off on tangents; it was entertaining to read, but I would have liked to have more of a, I guess what would be a scholarly approach to it. I would give this book three stars out of five.
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