The book has facing text of the African language texts and the English translation, and there is a wide range of proverb traditions, in addition to all the love poetry (click the images for a larger view).
Nick Awde grew up in Nigeria; you can find out more about him at Wikipedia. He is also the author of a book of Indian love poetry which you can read at the Internet Archive (this is interesting for me, because I've spent many years studying Indian storytelling also): Treasury of Indian Love: Poems and Proverbs from the Indian Subcontinent. This is also a facing-text book with the original languages and English translation (it's part of a whole series of love books published by Hippocrene).
The other book I want to share today provides a comparative and critical perspective on African proverbs about women: Source of All Evil: African Proverbs and Sayings on Women by Mineke Schipper.
You can find out more about Schipper's work in comparative literary studies at Wikipedia, and you can also find more of her books at the Internet Archive, including other books in African studies.
While the focus of this book is specifically on proverbs about women, the introduction provides a great overview of proverb studies in general and the ways that proverbs can exert a conservative force, even a strongly conservative force, while also creating spaces for oblique voices from the margins.
The book does not contain the original language versions, but it does a good job with providing some notes and commentary to contextualize the proverbs, as you can see here in this screenshot from the section on proverbs about older women (click the image to enlarge):
I've got one more day of proverb posts for tomorrow, and I hope these books are inspiring people to see that even though proverbs are small, they are hugely fascinating!
by Nicholas Awde
by Mineke Schipper
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