Customer Reviews

Chistes: Hispanic Humor Of Northern New Mexico And Southern Colorado

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"Chistes" are "brief anecdotes that contain a verbal or conceptual game capable of engendering laughter." They include jokes, practical jokes, and various forms of word play, including solecisms, puns, and double-entredres. Some of the chistes collected in this book have at least a foundation in real-life happenings, and others no doubt are fabricated from whole cloth. All are examples of folk humor as told by and among Hispanos of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

The book presents the chistes in both English and as told in the local vernacular of Spanish. Nasario García selected them, either as personally told to him or as contained in an earlier book, and he also is responsible for the English translations.

Most of these chistes would bomb on David Letterman. They are not very sophisticated; some are downright awkward. But they all are good-natured. Their Hispano tellers are, by and large, rural folk who have had to scrabble together a modest living in a rather austere high-desert land. They provide a window into, as John Nichols puts it in his fine Foreword, a community "where folks understood how to deal with difficult times with great verve, a strong communal identification, and plenty of wacky (yet usually instructive) humor."

I probably would never have bought CHISTES! on my own, but my youngest son gave it to me for Christmas. I am glad he did. I got a better sense of my Northern New Mexico neighbors who have lived here much, much longer than me. If, however, you are not from the area or do not have a keen interest in oral folklore, I doubt that CHISTES! will do much for you.