Darktown Follies

Darktown Follies, Amaud Jamaul Johnsons daring and surprising new collection of poems, responds to Black Vaudeville, specifically the personal and professional challenges African American variety performers faced in the early twentieth century. Johnson is fascinated by jokes that arent funny particularly, what it means when humor fails or reveals something unintended about our national character. Darktown Follies is an act of self-sabotage, a poets willful attempt at recklessness, abandoning the good sense God gave him, as an effort to explore the boundaries and intersections of race and humor.