UC Berkeley African American Studies Alumna J Finley began her career researching reparations and the legacy of slavery. But after studying how Black people navigate and resist oppression, she was eventually drawn to a subject – and a form of resistance – that was personally meaningful to her: comedy. As someone long drawn to comedy shows, Finley committed herself to collecting and honoring the stories Black women tell about themselves by becoming an audience member, critic and comedian herself.
Based on her research and experiences, Finley published the book Black Women’s Humor and Humanity, which theorizes humor – particularly sass – as a tool Black women use to articulate political marginalization and subvert power. Her book challenges the notion that sass is merely a personality trait, reframing it instead as a genre of discourse through which Black women speak back to authority.
Finley began her journey in academia with a bachelor’s degree in Black Studies and Legal Studies from Hampshire College. She later earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from UC Berkeley in 2008 and 2013, respectively. Her scholarly background played a critical role in shaping her work.
Finley spoke to Berkeley Social Sciences recently about her experiences at UC Berkeley and her new book. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell us about your background and how you ended up at UC Berkeley?
J Finley: I’m originally from Kentucky, and I went to undergraduate school at Hampshire College. It’s a college with no grades and no tests. By the time I was a junior, I had decided my major was going to be Black Studies and Legal Studies.
I wanted to be a lawyer – that was the original plan. I tried to study for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), but since I went to a school with no grades, I was terrible at taking tests. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I didn’t really have a career in mind, but I just knew that I wanted to do social justice work. That’s what I was super passionate about at the time.
One of my thesis advisers suggested that instead of law school, I should go to graduate school. I had never considered graduate school, but a program from UC Berkeley visited our college to help us understand that graduate school could be a path for us. That put UC Berkeley on my radar, and it so happened that they didn’t care about test scores – they wanted something more. UC Berkeley’s African Diaspora Studies Department (now African American Studies Department) is the only graduate school I applied to – and I was lucky enough to get in.
Can you tell us about your experience with African American Studies at UC Berkeley?
J Finley: When I initially came to UC Berkeley, I was going to study reparations and the legacy of slavery. What wound up changing my mind was my undergraduate thesis, which was a comparative study between the U.S. and South Africa on the legacy of white supremacy, racism and slavery. To continue that work, I decided I wanted to learn Zulu.
I had been learning Zulu for about a year when I received a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Fellowship to study in South Africa and study Zulu language and culture. Something about that experience made me realize that Black people are never going to get reparations. So I started thinking: How else do Black people make do? Well, we laugh. That was when I decided that I wanted to shift gears, and I started thinking about humor in a serious way.
Can you tell us about your book, Black Women’s Humor and Humanity?
J Finley: The book started as my dissertation while I was at Berkeley, which thought of sass as fundamental to Black women’s humor. It focused specifically on Black women’s stand up comedy from 1968 on.
This led me to realize that no one has ever theorized Black women’s humor. You can find theories on how humor functions and you can find social and cultural histories of American, women’s and feminist humor – but no one has ever attempted to articulate what makes Black women’s humor particular. How do we know it when we see it?
Can you tell us about how we can read Black women’s expressions of humor as attempts at social transformation?
J Finley: One of the things I argue in the book is that sass isn’t just an identity or a personality trait that Black women can be reduced to. It’s an intentional act. It’s a response to a perceived slight. Even if it’s just in the moment, it’s an inversion of power. It’s a way for a Black woman to claim herself as an agent; as a human being.
That has potential for social transformation because if you regard yourself as a human being, you have a particular consciousness as a person who is endowed with the capacity to make change. Sass does that in a really interesting and subtle way not only for the self, but also for the audience. It’s able to spark other people’s consciousness as well.
Can you tell us about the process of writing your book?
J Finley: The method is interdisciplinary, which I owe to UC Berkeley and their African Diaspora Studies program. When I was in graduate school, African American Studies and Theatre Professor Brandi Wilkins Catanese told us that if the only people we knew were from the 6th floor of the Social Sciences building (where African American Studies is located), then our world was too small.
The idea was that we needed to find other methods that worked for the critical work we wanted to do. So, I did that. I took classes in theatre and performance, ethnomusicology and anthropology. That interdisciplinarity shows up in my work.
My ethnographic practice comes from my theater and performance training under Performance Studies Professor Catherine Cole. Her method seminar had me going to comedy clubs in the Bay Area. From there, I started going to comedy shows and taking notes on jokes. I also learned to write stand up comedy and tell jokes on stage. It was really exciting to do research like that.
From there, I went to San Francisco Comedy College for a five-week course. It wasn’t just because I wanted to meet people in the industry. I wanted to understand the culture and the community by becoming part of it. That embodied experience gave me an understanding I couldn’t get from critical analysis alone. That added to my knowledge of Black women’s humor, but it also taught me more about American culture.
I brought what I learned into my own class, African American Humor and the Performance of Resistance, where students did a stand up comedy showcase at the end of every class. I’ve taught a version of that class every year since, and I’ve never had a student who didn’t want to do the show. I still teach comedy to my students – that’s still part of my practice, my research and my pedagogy. For me, it’s also part of the process of continuously learning. Since humor is always changing, I learn from my students all the time.
What impact do you hope your book will have?
J Finley: I want people to understand two things. Firstly, I hope people will understand and appreciate the seriousness of Black women’s humor. It can be entertaining, but it’s also serious. That is a real part of the American cultural tradition.
Secondly, sass as a genre of discourse is not a personality trait or a stereotype. The sassy Black woman is a stereotype, but sass is an intentional act and tool that Black women draw upon. It’s a performative tool. If you take those two things away from the book and nothing else, I’ll be satisfied.