After yesterday's lovely book of stories from Ghana by Peggy Appiah — Tales of an Ashanti Father— I wanted to write today about a contemporary African storyteller: Gcina Mhlophe from South Africa. You can read about her remarkable life and career at Wikipedia. Born in 1958 in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Gcina Mhlophe is an activist and actress, a storyteller and writer, and her wonderful book, Stories of Africa, published in 2003, is just a click away at Internet Archive, thanks to their digital lending program.
Some of these stories you will find in this book are famous not just all over Africa but all over the world, like the story of Jabulani and the Lion (an African version of the Indian folktale about the brahmin, the tiger, and the jackal), and also the story of The Crocodile and the Monkey's Heart (a Buddhist jataka tale from India that has been told for centuries in Africa too). One of my personal favorites in this book is the very first story, Mazanendaba, which is a story about the world-before-stories and how a woman named Mazanendaba, with the help of Eagle and Dolphin, brought stories in the world. I also really like Khethiwe, Queen of Imbira — with imbira/mbira being another name for the musical instrument also known as the kalimba; more at Wikipedia. If you play the kalimba, you will want to read that story for sure. Here is the illustration by Jeannie Kinsler (the stories are illustrated by various artists); look closely and you'll see Khethiwe is holding an mbira:
So, if you are looking for an exciting and beautiful little book of South African folktales to read, Gcina Mhlophe's Stories of Africa is a great one to choose, and it is just a click away, thanks to the Internet Archive.
Also, as Gcina Mhlope explains in the introduction to this book, she loves to write, but she loves telling stories to live audiences even more. YouTube is not the same as being right there in the audience, but it's still a way to see the wonderful Gcina Mhlope at work; here's just one of many videos of her performances: at YouTube:
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