African Folktales at Internet Archive: Intimate Folklore of Africa

Yesterday I shared William Bascom's book with hundreds of summaries of dilemma tales, so today I wanted to share a book with some wonderful dilemma tales told in detail: Yes and No: The Intimate Folklore of Africa by Alta Jablow, just a click away at Internet Archive.

The book contains 25 dilemma tales, along with about a dozen love stories also, plus proverbs and riddles too! Alta Jablow lived and worked in Liberia in the 1950s (her husband worked for UNESCO), and she used some of the stories she collected in Liberia in this book. Jablow does not provide bibliography story by story, but she does indicate the tribal tradition for each story, and you can find a list at the end of the foreword to the books she used as her sources. 

For the dilemma tales and love stories, she has multiple stories from the Fan, Hausa, Vai, Bura, Ibibio, and Bakongo storytelling traditions, along with about another dozen or so traditions that are represented by one story. The proverbs and riddles also come from a wide variety of sources, and the riddles are so much fun; here's a Yoruba riddle: The master is inside the hut, but his beard remains outside. I'll put the answer down at the bottom.

So, whether you are interested in proverbs OR riddles OR love stories OR dilemma tales, you will find something to enjoy in this book.

Yes and No:

The Intimate Folklore of Africa

by Alta Jablow

Answer to the riddle: FIRE, whose smoke escapes through the thatch of the hut.