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Trevor Noah’s comedy special on Netflix called Son of Patricia is an honest recount of the racism he has experienced in the different periods of his life. In addition, Noah tackles the theme of immigration identity and American politics, but he doesn’t do so from a place of anger (Doyle). Instead, Noah tackles the themes of race, immigration identity, and American politics through “discombobulation and puzzlement” (Doyle). This is evident from how the comedy special focuses on the fact that the everyday experiences of people of colour, and the hardship they face is the very same experience that Caucasians pay for. One example Noah gives in the special is a Caucasian friend wanting to go camping to experience what it feels like to not have access to electricity or water; which is something residents of the Michigan city Flint have been facing for a few years now (“Flint Water Crisis Fast Facts.”). Noah claims this phenomenon to be “poverty porn” (Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia).

The comedy special seems like a big irony. This is because one of the overall messages is that people should not be racist, yet the special invites the audience to laugh at the racism that Noah has experienced, or how racism has affected the way he is today. This raises the question of who defines what is acceptable or what is taboo in comedy? How are the audience of a comedy special given permission to laugh?

Noah’s comedy special sparks my interest because it educates people on the fact that racism can be and is implicit many times. It can be presented as micro-aggressions, and that individuals in society need to come to terms with their privilege for there to be significant changes in the way we treat marginalized individuals. This is evident from when Noah describes how his Caucasian friends paid for an “authentic” experience in Bali which was basically to see the poverty that locals in Bali experience daily. This part of the comedy special made me start wondering about how Noah is making people laugh yet educating them about these serious issues in such a friendly and matter of fact manner.

The comedy special builds on the work that we have done in ASTU regarding how trauma is handled or represented in comedy. This is the case because, in Noah’s special, he talks about racism as a concept. The work speaks about the racism that an individual, a collective group of people, and people from a particular nation have experienced. At the same time, it speaks about the racism that an individual, a collective group of people, and a nation exercises on others. Hence, although the discussion of the trauma that people have experienced and exercise on others isn’t explicitly talked about, it is embedded in the comedy special.

In addition, the comedy special invites the audience, and society to ponder on both a local and global scale about what the responsibilities and obligations as citizens are when thinking about and representing others and ourselves. A question that the Coordinated Arts Program Global Citizens stream seeks to answers.

Therefore, the comedy special Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia shall be fitting for future ASTU students to tackle.

Works Cited

Double, Oliver. “Tragedy Plus Time: Transforming Life Experience into Stand-Up Comedy.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 02, 2017, pp. 143–155., doi:10.1017/s0266464x17000057.

Doyle , John. “Trevor Noah’s Netflix Special Is Uniquely, Fiercely Funny-Logical.” The Globe and Mail, 21 Nov. 2018, www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/article-trevor-noahs-netflix-special-is-uniquely-fiercely-funny-logical/.

“Flint Water Crisis Fast Facts.” CNN, Cable News Network, 6 Dec. 2018, www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-facts/index.html.

Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia. Directed by David Paul Meyer, performance by Noah Trevor, 2018. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80239932?trackId=14170286&tctx=3%2C0%2Cd98a898e-fdbf-4714-96e5-fdea48e99f6d-234734976%2C5149b169-4651-4c86-b185-d59b7e68636e_66587146X3XX1552764806239%2C5149b169-4651-4c86-b185-d59b7e68636e_ROOT.

This textual record entitled “LETTER FROM QUON LONG” is from the Chung Collection at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Rare Books Special Collections. Textual records refer to written records, by any means, that can be read by the naked eye. In the letter, Quon Long,  the secretary of the Chinese Workers Protective Association outlines the unfair treatment that unemployed Chinese workers were suffering at the Soup Kitchen. This was evident through Quon Long highlighting that although there is a  “Government allowance of 16 cents per day”  for Chinese, “the two meals issued per day to each man contains a total of only 6 cents food value”. (Long) The purpose of the document was to reform how Chinese workers were being treated at the Soup Kitchen, which was evident from Quon Long’s request for four resolutions to be sent to respective authorities. The document represents the experience of unemployed Chinese workers who relied on the Soup Kitchen so as not to starve, and how those in power at the Soup Kitchen might have taken advantage of them. The text is significant because it gives insight into how Orientals were treated in Canada, and thus important to literary and cultural scholars who study critical race theory, or the lives of Oriental Immigrants in Canada.

The abstraction present in the document is power and authority. The document was formal with an official stamp of the Chinese Workers Protective Association, and a signature of its Secretary, Quon Long. This is significant because it gives Quon Long the authority to speak about the conditions that the Chinese Workers were suffering under. This authority also minimises any attack on the accuracy of the workers’ condition. Quon Long use of factual evidence, comparing how much money is supposed to be spent on food, and how much money actually is, enforces the reliability of Long, and thus his account of the workers’ conditions.  On one side of the document, there is the letter in English, and on the other its translation in Chinese. This provides Quon Long with the evidence to show the workers, who may not be able to read English that he has used his power to help them with their problem. The fact that these abstractions were illustrated through the format of the letter, highlights the association of power and authority with formality.

The issue tackled in this document was corruption and mistreatment. This is because  10 cents more that is supposed to be used to provide unemployed Chinese workers with food for the day, is being used somewhere else, and as a result preventing the workers from getting the most possible nutrition for their day. However, it isn’t very clear who the letter was addressed to, and thus undermines insight for literary and cultural scholars on groups that were able to tackle the issue back then. In addition, as it is not clear who the letter was addressed to, nor what its reply was, there is a possibility that Quon Long’s might have provided false or incorrect evidence of the money that should be spent on food for the Chinese workers.

Works Cited

Long, Quon. LETTER FROM QUON LONG. Chung Collection. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

Life narratives are very powerful tools for representing individuals and communities alike. The question of how marginalized people are represented in life narratives is especially important. This is because, as argued by Couser in the chapter “Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir”, in his novel Signifying Bodies, autobiographies from marginalized groups have the power to remove the social, economic and political domination in their lives.

In Couser’s chapter, he focuses on rhetoric – the way the narrator tells their story, and how the rhetoric of “triumph, horror, spiritual compensation, and nostalgia” (33), except rhetoric of emancipation continues the stereotypical views and magnifies the discrimination of marginalized people. In this blog entry, I shall explore the rhetoric of emancipation in the life narrative texts, “How I fail at being disabled” by Susan Robinson, and  Jessica Stewart’s self-portrait on depression and examine their effect on the representation of disabled people.

In Robinson’s Ted Talk she elaborates on five tips for what she labels as failing at being disabled:

1. “Know your superpowers”,
2. “Being skilled at getting it wrong”,
3. “Know that everyone is disabled in some way”,
4. “Point out the disability in everyone”,
5. “Pursue audacious goals” (Robinson).

In the elaboration of those tips, Robinson employs satire, such as when she describes that her superpowers are “ricocheting off glass walls” and “letting friends walk with kale in their mouth”.  The imagery of Robinson bouncing off glass walls, and having her friends talk to strangers with vegetable in their mouth is hilarious. More importantly, they highlight physical obstacles for Robinson and societal obligations she can’t meet. However, as Robinson makes light of the social expectations that causes stigma, she emphasises that what marginalizes disabled people is not the actual physical difficulties that disabled people have. This emphasis is what Couser describes as the rhetoric of emancipation. Robison’s narrative shows that the problem is the physical and social expectations that society has created or failed to remove. Hence, contributing to the positive representation of disabled people as dignified and changing the dialogue of them being nothing but vulnerable individuals.

Like Robinson’s talk, Jessica’s Stewart’s self-portraits don’t try to fix disability but instead displays it as something that can be ‘accommodated’ by removing social and cultural obstacles. Stewart’s series called “Melancholy – a girl called depression” portrays the genuine and intense “emotion felt by suffers of depression”. Through depicting the real emotions suffers experience as self-portraits, Stewart aims to break the societal perception of depression as “sad, dramatic” or “crazy”. In addition, Stewart aims to disrupt “unrealistic” cultural expectations “imposed by media”, which she believes “fuels depression”. (Shovova and Tribe)

The significance of Stewart’s series in transferring the perception of those with depression is evident in a personal example. When I showed the series to a friend, she realised that she never felt the way the author depicted depression when she used the term. This led to a moment of realisation that “depression” is a very serious term and a huge struggle for those who have it. The series also led to her deciding to stop using the word and take people very seriously when they say they are depressed.

In conclusion, “How I fail at being disabled” by Susan Robinson, and  Jessica Stewart’s self-portrait on depression are life narratives with the rhetoric of emancipation. They don’t try to ‘fix’ disability but display it as something that can be ‘accommodated’ by removing physical, social and cultural obstacles. This in turn positively represents disabled people as more than their disabilities.

Work Cited

Couser, G. T. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Knighton, Ryan. Cockeyed: a Memoir. PublicAffairs, 2006.

Robinson, Susan. “How I Fail at Being Disabled.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, www.ted.com/talks/susan_robinson_how_i_fail_at_being_disabled?utm_campaign=tedspread-a&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare.

Shovova, and Yugen Tribe. “Interview: Photographer Explores Own Depression with Surreal Self-Portraits.” My Modern Met, 21 May 2018, mymodernmet.com/janelia-mould-conceptual-photography-depression/.