If you check “female” on online sweepstakes entries (and why are they even asking about gender when the prize is a home???) and want to earn laughs instead of rebuking looks of horror as you recount true happenings from your own life, you want to read We Killed: the rise of women in American comedy. As I read, I fear I am mortally wounded and am watching the comedy of my past life flash before my eyes – from Goldie and Lillie on Laugh In to the first episodes of Saturday Night Live to Roseanne and Ellen, Cho and Garofalo. But no. It’s just Yael Kohen who through interviews with 150 people has build an extraordinary oral history of women in modern comedy beginning in the 1950s. From the beginnings to the basics to alternative voices, We Killed forever settles that age old question bandied around in comedy clubs (if nowhere else), “Are women funny?”
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