Biting Humor: More Than Just a Tension Builder

How targeted jokes can help resolve the conflict they create.

This is a horror story — no two ways about it.

As a parent, Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ epistolary short story “Belles Lettres” has kept me up at night. The story, from her award-winning collection, Heads of The Colored People, follows an increasingly rancorous letter-writing battle between the parents of children in a California primary school. If that do…