Culture

The Book Of James

Telling personal stories that represent cultures without trying to tell the story of an entire culture

I saw a Trevor Noah bit, a clip that he calls “between the scenes” where he talks to the audience. They’ve become a fairly popular part of his online canon. He gets to be funny and real. It feels authentic.

In this one he is talking about his ability to do various accents, at which he is thought to be quite good. He explains that he doesn’t do any accent that could be expected to encapsulate a whole tribe, culture or country. He just knows how to do Kevin, James or Louis. He is mimicking a friend who is Nigerian, Haitian or French. He has no idea if it’s a good Haitian accent, only that it is what his friend sounds like.

I was also reading an New Yorker review of the Pixar movie Soul, and the writer, a Zambian writer named Namwali Serpell, was complaining that despite all their effort to include Black people in the development of the Black characters and their experience, she didn’t feel it was an accurate representation of Black culture. Her review is less about the movie and more about how white society interprets Black culture, and I’m sure she has perfectly valid points, she teaches at Harvard after all, but it makes me wonder about any one person…