Friday, July 23, 2021

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Ndowe Tales

To finish up this week of book recommendations from Central Africa, I want to share this set of stories from Equatorial Guinea on the west coast of Central Africa: Ndòwé Tales by Enènge A'Bodjedi, just a click away at Internet Archive.


The book comes with a detailed introduction about the Ndowe people, their language and culture. As the author explains, he came to the United States to escape the Macias dictatorship, and while in the United States he began collecting stories from other Ndowe people so that he could help to preserve and share their stories in English.

There are some illustrations in the book too, along with notes for each story explaining Ndowe words and names, along with other cultural details and comparative notes about stories that are found in other African cultures. There are lots of animal stories, which are the stories of greatest interest to me! The story about the crocodile, for example, plays with the same motif of the kinship between crocodiles and chickens as in the story of The Crocodile and the Hen.


When Dr. A'Bodjedi published this book, he labeled it as volume 1, but so far another volume of stories has not appeared, but maybe it will. In the meantime, this book of stories awaits you at Internet Archive.

by Enènge A'Bodjedi





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