The story was inspired by a trip Grifalconi made to Cameroon and a folktale that she heard in a village located in the foothills of one of the volcanoes of Cameroon; you can find out more about the Cameroon line of volcanoes at Wikipedia.
The "story-within-the-story" of Grifalconi's book is about a volcanic eruption of long ago... and compare the 1986 disaster at Lake Nyos in the same region of Cameroon. In the village of Grifalconi's book, the people survived, but the village was changed forever:
Grifalconi wrote two more books about this same village: Darkness and the Butterfly and Osa's Pride, both of which are available at Internet Archive.
She also did the illustrations for James Berry's book, Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird, which is based on an Anansi story from Ghana.
I really like the way Grifalconi has depicted Anansi in this book! He's not quite human but not exactly a spider either:
Ann Grifalconi was born in 1929, and died just last year, in 2020. You can find out more about her life and career at Wikipedia; here is her obituary in the New York Times. In addition to being an artist and writer, she was also a highly successful business woman and political activist; for example, she was a founding board member of New York Feminist Credit Union in the 1970s. I love her re-vision of Michelangelo: And God Created Woman in Her Own Image.
In this post, I've focused on Grifalconi's Africa-themed books, but she also wrote many other books, including some wonderful books on African American subjects; you can browse the Internet Archive for more:
So, welcome to the world of Grifalconi's art and her words; there is lots of enjoy and learn from here.
by Ann Grifalconi
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