Relatability or Lack thereof in Midge's Book

    Similarly, to Samantha Irby, Tiffany Midge offers the audience a new perspective on a type of life that isn’t seen/shown/expressed too often. The reason for this being is that Tiffany Midge is Native American. As she hints throughout her book, she uses humor in order to casually call out the media and entertainment industry to show their lack of representation, and their lack of realistic representation when there something does come out (an example would be Dances with Wolves).

            Because Midge’s general audience is other Native Americans that can understand her jokes, her humor is hard to follow at times for someone who isn’t native. An example of this would be in the chapter, “Conversations with My Lakota Mom.” In this chapter, Midge recounts conversations with her mom, and for example in the first section, “Conversations with My Lakota Mom, No. 1,” it is hard to understand the humor behind the “Chippewa dancers” and “Chippendale dancers” and the “chipmunks” (109). Because the author's conversations with her mom are so personal, it is extremely hard for an outsider to understand them or be able to relate to them. At the same time though, the author shows that “we” might not be so different after all, with her chapter, “Eight Types of Native Moms.” Even though we all have different types of names for different types of moms, Midge shows how throughout all cultures there are these archetypes that everyone can agree on.

            Midge’s criticism on lack of representation can be seen in her chapter titled, “Feast Smudge Snag.” In this chapter, Midge casually ridicules popular movies, by reimagining them with a “native twist.” In all or almost all of the movies she mentioned, such as Eat, Pray, Love, and the classic Harry Potter, she points out that most of these movies have an all-white or close to an all-white cast. She particularly makes fun of Harry Potter by saying, “being that so many white people believe in Indians practice magic, you’d think they’d try and be nicer to us” (115). This also shows double standards. In a way, Midge is saying, “white people are okay with magic when it’s whitewashed in movies, yet they feel uncomfortable when the ‘original’ or ‘actual’ (according to them) people use it.” Even though Midge did write with her particular audience in mind, I wonder if she, in a way, also added humor that only other native people would understand, as a type of “revenge.” “We” leave them out of media and entertainment and basically everything, and she leaves us out of her jokes.

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