For today's post of stories from western Africa, I want to return to an author I have not written about in a while: the great Harold Courlander, with three more of his books. You can use this link to see all the books by Courlander featured at this blog.
The first is a collection of Ashanti folktales from Ghana: The Hat-shaking Dance, and Other Tales from the Gold Coast, coauthored with Albert Kofi Prempeh.
Remember Anansi and the beans from yesterday? That's the "hat-shaking dance" story!
The art for this book is by Enrico Arno, one of Courlander's regular collaborators. Here is his rendering of Anansi the spider and Owoh the snake:
Next is Olode the Hunter and Other Tales from Nigeria, coauthored with Ezekiel Eshugbayi.
The trickster appearing in many of the stories in this book is Ijapa the tortoise, and Ezekiel Eshugbayi was Courlander's co-author on a book dedicated to tortoise stories: Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales.
Again, the illustrations for this book are by Enrico Arno; here is Ijapa and the Ojola the snake:
The final book is also centered on Nigeria: Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes: Myths, Legends, and Heroic Tales of the Yoruba People of West Africa.
The book also contains appendices about Yoruba orishas worshipped in the Americas and also Yoruba myths and legends in Cuba, and also Yoruba music in the Americas (Courlander was a musicologist as well as being a collector of folktales and mythology). There is a glossary and pronunciation guide in the back.
There are illustrations by Larry Lurin inspired by Yoruban art (Lurin died very recently, in 2019, and he is best known for his movie posters; he did the posters for Heaven Can Wait, Platoon, and The Natural!).
You could probably spend a whole year just exploring the many books of Harold Courlander (and I've still got a couple more coming in future posts); here are today's Courlander books from western Africa:
by Harold Courlander
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