and physical comedy to share vignettes about sexuality and religion that drew howling laughter from her audiences. She was one of the few women who performed extended spoken word pieces in the black signifying or toasting tradition. Scholar L. H. Stallings argues that through blue comedy, a genre often associated with men, Page and other Black female comics in the genre “continue a Black female trickster tradition dedicated to creating oral cultures, divergent language practices, and initiatives to change definitions and boundaries of gender and sexuality in society”. In addition, Stallings writes that by speaking openly about her own sexual desires and pleasure, Page broke taboos and challenged dominant ideologies of Black women’s performances of gender and sexuality. Page’s delivery and cadence was based in Black folklore traditions, working-class vocabulary and speech patterns, and Black church sermons. The Black church, argues scholar J. Finley, at times uplifted women’s voices less than men’s, so Page “dealt with women's silence in the church by transforming the sermon into a radical secular form via BWCL [Black women’s comic literacy] and blues idioms". Page infused jokes like “Whores in Church” from Watch It, Sucker! with lilting and rhythmic gospel vocals that, when coupled with her salacious humor, played with divisions between the sacred, secular, and lewd. Page employed slight impressions to distinguish the characters in her stories, but primarily relayed her tales as an omniscient narrator. She riffed off her audience, riling them up as she escalated her jokes. She also used physical comedy. At one rowdy 1989 performance in Richmond, Virginia, Page removed her underwear while on stage and auctioned it off to the highest bidder in the increasingly rambunctious crowd. Personal life Page was married and widowed three times. She married her first husband at the age of 14, and before he died when she was 19 they had a daughter, Clara. After her third husband died when Page was in her thirties, she decided to never remarry. Page was religious and affiliated with the Landmark Community Church during her first years in Los Angeles. In 1981, she became an evangelist in the Holiness Church. Her daughter, Clara, was an evangelist preacher. Death Page died of a heart attack following complications from diabetes on September 14, 2002, at age 81. She is interred in an outdoor crypt at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Page's daughter, the evangelist Clara Estella Roberta Johnson,