by Shepherd Siegel ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 2022
A compelling catalog of Tricksters and a convincing analysis of their power.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
An activist scholar explores the value of the Trickster archetype to contemporary society.
The Warrior archetype, writes author Siegel, has a firm grip on 21st-century American politics and culture, as reflected in a collective “infatuation with toxic masculinity.” From the popularity of the NFL to the “faux heroism” of QAnon conspiracy theorists, many Americans live “for the fight,” eschewing democratic virtues, believing “there is no loyal opposition, only enemies.” What America needs, this book argues, is more “Trickster energy” that laughs at the “carnival of errors known as society.” Not only do Trickster archetypes have no time for vengeance or violence in their pursuit of fun, but they often expose the dirty underbelly of society and the true motives of the powerful. Films made by the Marx Brothers, for instance, use slapstick humor as a vehicle for biting social critiques of elites and self-styled authorities. Folk stories crafted by enslaved Africans in the Americas used the West African Trickster god called Eshù Elégba to flip the narrative script about power dynamics between enslavers and the oppressed; they also highlighted the ways female Tricksters utilized clever chicanery to stave off “oppressive husbands, kings, and lovers.” Drawing on a diverse range of literature and films, this book begins with a thoughtful examination of shared attributes of Tricksters across genres, time periods, and cultures, from the Native American coyote and Zulu weasel to “The Fool” in King Lear and Bugs Bunny in Looney Tunes. Most, for example, are loners who have an ambivalence toward black-and-white morality (“they just want to have fun”). And while they revel in scatological humor, they’re powerful figures who use deception to undermine authorities. Connecting literary tropes to contemporary life, Siegel makes an effective case for the practical value of Tricksters. Sacha Baron Cohen’s menagerie of characters (who include Ali G., Borat, and Brüno) not only have provided global audiences with laughs, but also highlight latent biases in American culture. Borat, for example, convinced a bar-full of Arizonans to sing “Throw the Jew down the well,” and Brüno nearly started a homophobic riot in Arkansas by kissing a man in a cage fight.
An activist scholar immersed in the Bay Area’s bohemian counterculture, Siegel shows a playful writing style, replete with puns and inside jokes, that mimics the Trickster archetype in using humor against the dark, powerful forces that drive contemporary politics and society. With a doctorate from UC Berkeley, Siegel is a skilled researcher who supports his argument with 250-plus endnotes that reflect his interdisciplinary approach to Tricksters, which combines history, sociology, anthropology, and literary criticism. Though the book’s firm command of the scholarly literature surrounding Tricksters will appeal to academics, its approachable, often jovial, writing style will also appeal to a wide audience. This emphasis on accessibility is reflected in the book’s ample references to popular TV shows and movies as well as its inclusion of dozens of photographs, posters, film stills, and other visual aids. And while the book’s politics are decisively leftist, which may alienate conservatives who by definition seek to preserve traditional institutions of power and authority, this is inevitable in a work that celebrates Tricksters who are notoriously “antistructure.”
A compelling catalog of Tricksters and a convincing analysis of their power.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1631957307
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
More by Shepherd Siegel
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
BOOK REVIEW
by Amy Tan
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
Share your opinion of this book
More by Rebecca Stefoff
BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales
BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez
BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.