Yo Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes, And

by Onwuchekwa Jemie

Collected primarily in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia during the classic era of black "street poetry" (i.e., during the late 1960s and early 1970s) these raps, signifyings, toasts, boasts, jokes and children's rhymes will delight general readers as well as scholars. Ranging from the simple rhymes that accompany children's games to verbally inventive insults and the epic exploits of traditional characters like Shine and Stagger Lee, these texts sound the deep rivers of culture, echoing two continents. Onwuchekwa Jemie's introductory essay situates them in a globally pan-African context and relates them to more recent forms of oral culture such as rap and spoken word.

Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lore and language of black schoolchildren--collected in the 1970s but only published much later. Children's attempted or parodied understandings of sex, welfare, school, heroism, and more. The rhymes and tales will evoke a bittersweet nostalgia for those who remember them from childhood (I found this by looking for the half-remembered rhyme "Donna died/How'd she die?/Oh she died like this"). But Zeleza also offers some theories on the roles played by the crueler or harder-edged aspects of black childhood culture.