If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers (Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World) - Hardcover

Schmidt, Claire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299313506 ISBN 13: 9780299313500

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017

Synopsis

America is fascinated by prisons and prison culture, but few Americans understand what it is like to work in corrections. Claire Schmidt, whose extended family includes three generations of Wisconsin prison workers, introduces readers to penitentiary officers and staff as they share stories, debate the role of corrections in American racial politics and social justice, and talk about the important function of humor in their jobs.

In a state that locks up a disproportionate number of men and women of color, white prison workers occupy a complicated social position as representatives of institutional authority and bearers of social stigma. The job, by turns dangerous, dull, or dehumanizing, is aided by a quick wit, comedic timing, and verbal agility. The men and women who do this work rely on storytelling, practical jokes, and sarcasm to bond with each other, build flexible relationships with inmates, and create personal identities that work in and out of prison. Schmidt shows how this humorous occupational culture both upholds and undermines prisons as social institutions.

Issues of power and race, as well as sex and gender, infuse Schmidt's groundbreaking analysis, and she also engages with current scholarship about identity, occupational folklore, and family narrative. This eye-opening, provocative book reveals the invisible culture, beliefs, and aesthetics embedded in workplace humor.

About this title

Review:

"Drawing on decades of personal experience, a dozen years of sustained field research, and a wealth of pertinent studies across a range of disciplines, Claire Schmidt offers what is at once a deeply humanistic ethnography of prison workers and the finest extant study of any occupation's folk humor." --James P. Leary, author of So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest

"A lucid, compelling study of some very funny, compassionate corrections officers. Their intelligence and comic delight shine through on every page." --Jackie McGrath, College of DuPage

About the Author:

Claire Schmidt is a folklorist and assistant professor of English at Missouri Valley College.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0299313506
• ISBN 13: 9780299313500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 282