Not Without Laughter

Laughter appears throughout the novel as an important motif related to the theme of race and the response to racism in the novel. White laughter appears in the novel several times, including the laughter of whites who laugh at a minstrel act in a vaudeville show, the laughter of a racist white Southerner who tries to force Sandy to dance for him, and the laughter of white children who laugh as they witness their black peers being ridiculed and discriminated against. The laughter of whites reflects white privilege and the power of white supremacy.

There are also several varieties of black laughter as well. Black laughter appears in the novel most frequently among working-class African Americans who have rejected the power of white supremacy and black respectability to define their experiences. The Bottoms, the black working-class neighborhood in Stanton, is frequently filled with this kind of laughter, and Sandy also hears it when he sees blues and ragtime being performed and enjoyed by African Americans who refuse to be shamed for their poverty.

While respectable black figures like Tempy and her husband, Mr. Siles, see the laughter as African Americans’ fulfillment of stereotypes of African Americans as happy-go-lucky and feckless, Sandy comes to understand by the end of the novel that laughter is a healthy psychological response to racism.