Humor is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think about African literature. This is likely because scholars have largely focused on the history of colonialism and its aftermath. As Ghana-based academic Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang reminds us, they have typically followed the lead of writers like Chinua Achebe, who saw literature as a means of teaching people about their past, their worth, and their place in the world. Humor doesn’t always fit neatly into that framework. When literature is primarily seen as a vehicle for resistance, realism, and history, laughter can feel like an afterthought.

In Typologies of Humor in African Literatures, published in 2024 by the University of Michigan Press, Opoku-Agyemang argues that humor runs deep in African storytelling. It runs through folktales, theater, music, poetry, novels, and even today’s digital culture—memes, viral videos, and social media skits. Yet, even though humor is everywhere, it can be difficult to see how it structures fictional worlds and storytelling. That’s where her book comes in. It gives us the tools to understand how humor works in African literature.

One of the book’s key contributions is that it identifies recurring character types that represent different modes of humor. This is what Opoku-Agyemang means by typologies of humor: categories of characters that embody distinct ways of using humor to shape a story. The four types she examines are the trickster, the mimic, the interpreter, and the deviant. These figures appear in works as diverse as Chuma Nwokolo’s Diaries of a Dead African, Wole Soyinka’s Jero plays and The Lion and the Jewel, Kobina Sekyi’s The Blinkards, Ferdinand Oyono’s Le Vieux nègre et la médaille, Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s L’Etrange destin de Wangrin, Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, and Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, among many others. The characters in these stories resist easy categorization. They challenge boundaries and expectations, do very interesting things with language, and destabilize the worlds they inhabit often by turning meaning upside down in ways that are both comedic and revealing.

Opoku-Agyemang describes this dynamic:

I read writers… whose texts play with ambivalence in different ways and to comic effect. Their humor can be simultaneously subversive and conservative or critical of difference or newness. It resides in the tug-of-war between preserving the status quo and challenging it. These writers thus paint images with fascinating layers of ambiguity: a career fraudster bitterly chastising his victim for dishonesty; an Mfantse colonial subject earnestly proclaiming her Britishness in broken English; an interpreter hearing a text and blithely proclaiming the opposite message; or a clown bearing the trappings of a capable leader. Their amusing ethos comes through in narration and action.

While Opoku-Agyemang is not the first scholar to look at humor in African literature, she makes humor an illuminating framework for African writing. It is also interesting that does not simply apply existing theories on humor from classic European studies. While engaging with those traditions, she grounds her analysis in African storytelling practices, oral performance, and contemporary digital culture, making the book an essential contribution to the field.

Typologies of Humor in African Literatures fills a long-standing gap in African literary studies. It argues that humor is not just comic relief. It informs how characters navigate power, interact with the world, and even how stories take form. Whether through the trickster outsmarting everyone, the mimic fumbling through a colonial courtroom, or the internet remixing religious sermons into viral comedy, humor is a solid connecting thread that runs through the form and evolution of African literature.

One last thing we’d say is this. An academic book about humor runs the risk of being dry or overly technical, but Opoku-Agyemang’s writing is anything but. Her writing is genuinely enjoyable, even funny at times! It is a rare scholarly work that both analyzes humor brilliantly and embodies it in a way that makes it a pleasure to read.

Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang teaches at Ashesi University where she is Director of the Ashesi Writing Center: Comparative Literature. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto, a Master’s from the Paris-Sorbonne Université, and an MA from the University of Cape Coast.

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Buy a copy of Typologies in African Humor here!