I had to read part of this book for a graduate-level American Studies course, and if it hadn't been a required text, you couldn't have PAID me to read it. There are some very interesting things to say about blackface minstrelsy, but if Lott says them, they are lost to me in between the countless references to sex. Everything, in Eric Lott's analysis, is phalic and/or homoerotic. A tamborine is an anus. A nose is a penis. A throat is "vaginal." And a common theme in the book? White men envy the black man's penis. PUH-LEEZE. So when grown men can't say "wee-wee" and snicker in the fourth-grade bathroom any longer do they just write a book about it and call it academia? His obsession with sexual themes was offensive and downright silly. When I picked up the book, I was hoping to learn something useful about race or class or culture, but instead, Lott had me scrutinizing 19th century minstrelsy posters for anything that might remotely resemble a sexual organ. With so many wonderful books in the world to read, I don't know why anyone would voluntarily waste their time on this one.

This book is well worth the 55 bucks I paid for it. If you're interested in American culture and especially the racial issues which are still at the heart of the our national struggle, you too will be happy to pay a mere 55 bucks for a book lays the whole thing out and lets us know where we've been and where we're going.

Eric Lott provide us with an incisive analysis of a long ignored and conflicted history of the American Minstrel Traditon. Readers will be impressed with Lott's deft handling of history and critical theory, crafting persuasive and cogent arguments that reveal the ambivalence of a tradition that cloaked racial antagonisms and sexual insecurities. Lott, an English professor at the University of Virginia, did his graduate work at Columbia University and this book is an extension of his dissertation. Non-academics may find Lott's prose somewhat dense but this should not hamper anyone from gleaning Lott's clear message: the American Minstrel Tradition represented a contradictory and problematic art form that granted Whites a forum through which to articulate their "admiration" of Blackness while appropriating it for political ends. A must read!!!!! A major contribution to critical race studies scholarship. 5 stars!!!!

Matthew Abraham (Dept. of English-- Purdue University)