Oreo
by Fran Ross★★★★½
2015 (originally published 1974) • 240 pages • New Directions
After watching Amy Schumer host Saturday Night Live, I remain as ambivalent as ever about the comedian. It’s not that I’m not glad for Schumer—I am! And it’s not that Schumer isn’t making considerable strides for women in comedy that will heartily be appreciated by the comedians that follow her. But, as Katie Barnes at Feministing points out, while her comedy is feminist-minded, it’s not terrifically inclusive. And all things, especially comedy, benefit from an appreciation and understanding of intersectionality, as well as a broader perspective. Greater awareness and sensitivity to the world around you doesn’t inhibit comedy; it expands comedy.
Case in point: Fran Ross’ Oreo, a comic novel published in 1974 that promptly (and undeservedly) fell off the radar, which gleefully seizes upon the intersecting identities of and imposed upon Christine “Oreo” Clark, a half-black, half-Jewish girl from Philadelphia, as comic grounds. How before its time is Oreo? It includes a joke about doctors providing subpar health care to queer people… made by a gay character at the doctors’ expense.
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