African Folktales at Internet Archive: Yoruba Trickster Tales

Yesterday I did a Spider book — Ananse the Spider: Tales from an Ashanti Village by Peggy Appiah — so today I want to switch over to Spider's rival for the title of greatest West African trickser: tortoise! Here's a fantastic book of Tortoise stories that is just a click away at Internet Archive: Yoruba Trickster Tales by Oyekan Owomoyela.

One of the best parts about Dr. Owomoyela's style of telling the stories is the way that he weaves proverbs into every story... and no surprise, because he has also published books about Yoruba proverbs! You cannot find his proverb books at Internet Archive, but this one is available as a Kindle: Yoruba Proverbs, and you can sometimes snag a cheap used copy at Abe Books (that's what I did!). 

Plus I was delighted to find this website at the University of Nebraska which features some of his work on Yoruba proverbs: The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yorùbá Proverb Treasury.

Dr. Owomoyela was born in Osun, Nigeria, and he taught at universities in Nigeria and in Ghana, and then became a professor at the University of Nebraska; he died in 2007. You can find out more at this "Nebraska Authors" webpage.

Oyekan Owomoyela

If you are curious about Tortoise the trickster, Dr. Owomoyela's book is an excellent place to meet Ajapa and learn all about him!

Yoruba Trickster Tales

by Oyekan Owomoyela