African Folktales at Internet Archive: Abrahams' African Folktales

I'll finish up this week of anthology recommendations with another outstanding scholar, Roger Abrahams, a contemporary of Harold Sheub (from yesterday's post); you can read about Abrahams' life and career at Wikipedia. Abrahams did most of his own work in the United States and the Caribbean, looking at African traditions in the Americas, and he is also the author of a wonderful anthology:  African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World. It's just a click away at the Internet Archive.

There are 93 stories in the book from all over Africa, organized thematically: the first part contains "tales of wonder from the great ocean of story," the second part contains "stories to discuss and even argue about" (dilemma tales!), the third part (my favorite) contains "tales of Trickster and other ridiculous creatures: tales to entertain," the fourth part contains two epic tales, and the final part contains a hodgepodge of stories which Abrahams calls "making a way through life." It's an excellent collection with notes on each story and detailed bibliography.

You can also see other books by Roger Abrahams at the Internet Archive; I'll be sharing these books here when I move on from African folklore recommendations to books from the Americas... but that will be a while: there are so many excellent African folklore books yet to recommend!

So, here's all of Week 6 on one page, concluding with this great collection by Roger Abrahams:

African Folktales:

Traditional Stories of the Black World

by Roger Abrahams