Glenda Carpio is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2009

"An exceptionally well-executed and original piece of scholarship...Carpio's account is compelling, doggedly argued, skillfully executed, and somehow simultaneously both focused and sweeping. For readers interested in humor scholarship, or African-American culture history, or both, Laughing Fit To Kill absolutely deserves a place on the bookshelf." --Studies in American Humor

"One of the most groundbreaking critical studies of black humor in recent memory."--Daphne A. Brooks, Princeton University

"Glenda Carpio has written a marvelously compelling and seminal study of the rich and radical tradition of the uses of black humor, satire, and wit to confront even the most painful aspects of the African American past. This is a delightfully original contribution to the historical and literary scholarship about slavery."--Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University

"Within this theoretically rich and fundamentally interdisciplinary project, Glenda Carpio uses the laugh as both a subject of study and a methodology for analyzing texts ranging from visual art and popular culture to literature and theater. Her book takes a most innovative and insightful approach to the question of how the legacy of slavery continues to resonate within the African American cultural imaginary."--Harry J. Elam Jr., Stanford University

"Laughing is a thorny, fascinating and complex study of black artists - writers, comedians, painters - who use humor to redress the horrors of slavery and its ghosts that linger in the public imagination."--Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News