In her book, a memoir, Hango describes the childhood embarrassments, hurts, and instability flowing from her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s struggle to cope in small-town Quebec.
I started this chapter of my book with the above quote because I think it highlights the issues of social context and personal intent that flow through this book and maybe all works of art, particularly those labelled humorous.
Hango did not think her book was particularly funny when she wrote it in 1948 and was surprised to receive a humour award for it. She wrote it to clear her conscience, and though Angéline Hango lived to the age of ninety, she never wrote anything for publication after the Leacock Medal.
The “Truthfully” in the book’s title
refers to Hango’s pledge to break from her lifelong habit of “fibbing” about
her family, a practice she refines in school, social settings, and eventually the
workplace.
Some
commentators suggest that 1940s readers found their amusement in material that
is “a touch politically incorrect by today’s standards,” this being the 1940s
stereotype of alcoholic, illiterate, and superstitious backwoods French
Canadians, and, more generally, the seemingly comic presentation of an abusive
circumstance.
For this distortion, the publisher,
Oxford University Press, bears some responsibility. It sprinkled cheery
cartoons throughout the book and branded the story as a “riotous” and “revealing”
picture of “life in rural French Canada”.
Still, Hango meets the humorist’s test of
telling the truth with affection and can still make readers laugh – and
maybe forgive.
.