African Diaspora at Internet Archive: African American Folktales

Like with the Virginia Hamilton book from yesterday, today's author, Roger Abrahams, is someone who will be familiar to readers from the African phase of this project too. Earlier I wrote about Abrahams's book African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World, and here is today's book: African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World, which is the best anthology IMO for learning about African storytelling traditions in the Americas.

The book contains 107 stories, organized into different sections as follows (these are links to the specific story pages at Internet Archive):

PART I. Getting Things Started: How the World Got Put Together That Way

Never Seen His Equal / The Man Makes and the Woman Takes / Bringing Men and Women Together / The Fight over Life / The Wind and the Water Fighting / The Word the Devil Made Up / The Knee-High Man Tries to Get Sizable / Pig’s Long Nose and Greedy Mouth / Getting Common Sense / Hankering for a Long Tail / The Devil’s Doing / The John Crows Lose Their Hair / Tadpole Loses His Tail / The Owl Never Sleeps at Night / Why Hens Are Afraid of Owls / The Gifts of Dipper and Cowhide / Buh Nansi Scares Buh Lion / Testing the Good Lord / MrPossum Loves Peace / Get Back, Get Back / No Justice on Earth

PART II. Minding Somebody Else’s Business and Sometimes Making It Your Own

Meeting the King of the World / MrBamancoo Gets Dropped / The Tug-of-War between Elephant and Whale / Tiger Becomes a Biding Horse / The Telltale Pepper Bush / Making the Stone Smoke / The Latest Song / The Signifying Monkey / The Singing Bones / A Boarhog for a Husband / The Woman Who Was a Bird / My Mother Killed Me, My Father Ate Me

PART III. Getting a Comeuppance: How (and How Not) to Act Stories

What Makes Brer Wasp Have a Short Patience / Between the Fiddler and the Dancer / Being Greedy Chokes Anansi / The Doings and Undoings of the Dogoshes / Spreading Fingers for Friendship / Don’t Shoot Me, Dyer, Don’t Shoot Me / Little Eight John / The Poor Man and the Snake / The Little Bird Grows / Tricking All the Kings / The Feast on the Mountain and the Feast under the Water / Hide Anger until Tomorrow / Buying Two Empty Hands / Cutta Cord-La / Brer Bear’s Grapevine / A Foolish Mother / Old Granny Grinny Granny / You Never Know What Trouble Is until It Finds You / He Pays for the Provisions / The Cunning Cockroach / Little Boy-Bear Nurses the Alligator Children / The Girl Made of Butter / Poppa Stole the Deacon’s Bull / The Trouble with Helping Out / The Rooster Goes Away in a Huff

PART IV. How Clever Can You Get? Tales of Trickery and Its Consequences

Why They Name the Stories for Anansi / Brother Rabbit Takes a Walk / The Lion in the Well / A License to Steal / The Race between Toad and Donkey / Crawling into the Elephant’s Belly / A Strange Way to Sleep / Goobers Gone, Rabbit Gone / Assaulting All the Senses / Brer Rabbit’s Riddle / The Horned Animals’ Party / Anansi Plays Dead / Anansi Climbs the Wall / Dancing to the River / “Trouble” Coming Down the Road / No Chicken Tonight 

PART V. The Strong Ones and the Clever: Contests and Confrontations

Golden Breasts, Diamond Navel, Chain of Gold / The Flying Contest / Loggerhead / Trying to Get the Goldstone / Stackolee / Escaping, Slowly / Turning into Nóuna—Nothing / The Old Bull and the Young One / Fasting for the Hand of the Queen’s Daughter / Weak in the Day and Strong at Night / Jack Beats the Devil / Three Killed Florrie, Florrie Killed Ten

PART VI. Getting Around Old Master (Most of the Time)

They Both Had Dead Horses / You Talk Too Much, Anyhow / Making the Eyes Run / Making a Wagon from a Wheelbarrow / The One-Legged Turkey / John Outruns the Lord / A Flying Fool / Horses Stay Outside / The Sinking of the Titanic / Competition for Laziness / John Outwits MrBerkeley / Black Jack and White Jack / Philanewyork / The Barn Is Burning

PART VII. In the End, Nonsense

Big-Gut, Big-Head, Stringy-Leg / A Chain of Won’ts / Animal Talk / A Comic Conversation / A Smoking Story / The Things That Talked / Endings

There are notes on all the stories in the back, plus informative introductions to each section, along with a comprehensive bibliography. It's a perfect jumping-off point to learn more about both African American and Caribbean storytelling traditions.

Abrahams is also the author of other important books on African American culture, especially language and storytelling. You can find out more about his long career as a scholar here at Wikipedia. Abrahams died just a few years ago, in 2017; here is his obituary in the New York Times.

Here are just a few of his other books that you can find at Internet Archive:

Talking Black

Positively Black

Singing the Master

Meanwhile, if you want a comprehensive overview, just spend some time with Abrahams's African Folktales and African American Folktales, both of which are ready and waiting at the Archive.

African American Folktales:

Stories from Black Traditions in the New World

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Ring of Tricksters

As promised in yesterday's post wrapping up the African folklore project at this blog, today begins the Diaspora project, writing about African American and Caribbean folktales in order to explore the vast legacy of African storytelling traditions in the Americas.

I decided to start with a beautiful book by Virginia Hamilton that I wrote about way back in May when this all got started: A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa. The book is just a click away at the Internet Archive, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending.

As you can see from the title, the premise of Hamilton's book is the circle connecting the tricksters of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. That is the question that got me started (where did those Brer Rabbit stories come from?), and Hamilton's book is a great place to start pondering that question with 4 stories from the United States, 3 from the Caribbean, and 4 from Africa. Here are the story links:

United States: Buh Rabby and Buh Gator / Buzzard and Wren Have a Race / The Cat and the Rat / Bruh Wolf and Bruh Rabbit Join Together

Caribbean: That One, Anansi / Magic Anansi / Cunnie Anansi Does Some Good

Africa: Cunnie Rabbit and Spider Make a Match / How Chameleon Became a Ride / Old Mister Turtle Gets a Whipping / The Animals Share

The illustrations are by Barry Moser (find out more at Wikipedia), who is one of the Hamilton's regular collaborators. Here's his wonderful two-page spread for Bruh Rabbit and Bruh Wolf:

And here's his illustration for a story involving Parrot and Tiger.

As you can see, Mower opted to depicted Tiger as an actual tiger, and in her notes to the stories Hamilton suggests that the Indo-Caribbean storytelling traditions would encourage the identification of "tiger" as an actual tiger. 

As the same time, "tiger" can refer in varieties of African English to a leopard or cheetah or other big cat,. As a result, "tiger" shows up in African folktales told in English or pidgin, and as a result "tiger" is also a character in African American folktales as well as in Caribbean stories.

For another beautiful book by Virginia Hamilton with illustrations by Barry Moser, here's In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World.

So, enjoy! And this is just the first of what will be many posts about beautiful books of African American and Caribbean folktales, including more books to come by Virginia Hamilton (you can read more about her life and career at Wikipedia). Enjoy!

A Ring of Tricksters:

Animal Tales from

America, the West Indies, and Africa

by Virginia Hamilton

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Week 37

Yesterday I posted the last (for now) African folktale spreadsheet update, and today is the last (for now) weekly round-up of African folktale books....... because I'm going to start the African American and Caribbean folktale project tomorrow! It's not quite Black History Month yet (that starts on Tuesday, February 1), but this weekly structure helps me stay on track, and I'm also just super-excited about sharing all these beautiful African American and Caribbean folktale books. My own interest in African folktales started because I wanted to know about the origins of Brer Rabbit stories in the U.S. and Anansi stories in the Caribbean, and I have a HUGE LIST of African American and Caribbean folktale books at the Internet Archive that I want to share with everybody here!

When I started this project back in May, I focused on these daily blog posts to describe the books, the slideshow as a way to collect them all in one place along with the blog index page, and then Twitter being a way to share the books and connect with fellow readers. 

Then, along the way, I started writing the bibliography guide (you can see how that's going here: A Reader's Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive) and I also started by the story-by-story spreadsheet. In addition, I realized I could use the Wayback Machine as part of the project too, including important online resources (like Elizabeth Laird's incredible Ethiopian Folktale project) side by side with the books. As things finish up, I've blogged about 316 books here, and there are 545 books and articles included in the story-by-story spreadsheet which links to over 10,000 individual stories at the Internet Archive. I had no idea when I began that the project would grow so large, all thanks to the amazing resources that I found. It's been a complete joy to find all these materials and share them with others!

And now, based on what I learned from the African folktale project, I hope to do an even better job with the Caribbean and African American project right from the very beginning. Of course, I'll also be keeping an eye out for new African folktale books that show up at the Internet Archive too, which means I'll have the occasional African blog post too.

So, here's this week's round-up as usual, and you can see the round-ups for the previous months: May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December, plus January.

And I'll see you back here tomorrow for the new book-adventure that is about to begin! :-)

African Animal Tales

by Rogério Andrade Barbosa

The Trickster in West Africa:

A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight

by Robert Doane Pelton

Why Leopard Has Spots:

Dan Stories From Liberia

by Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret Lippert

The Rainmaker's Dog:

International Folktales

to Build Communicative Skills

by Cynthia Dresser

Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon

by Katrin Tchana

In the Rainfield: Who Is the Greatest?

by Isaac Olaleye

Tales from the Basotho

by Minnie Postma

Africa at the Internet Archive: Spreadsheet (10)

Here is the final update post about the spreadsheet of African Folktales at the Internet Archive, at least for a while. That's because I'll be switching over to African American and Caribbean books starting in February (Black History Month!)... and that will mean a new spreadsheet full of books and stories. But don't worry: I will be keeping an eye out for new African story sources that get added to the Archive, and I'll update the spreadsheet accordingly.

For now, I am excited to say that the spreadsheet of African folktales (which includes more broadly myths, legends, all kinds of traditional storytelling) ended up here with over 10,000 items; 10,077 to be precise. Those stories come from 545 different books and articles that you can find online at the Internet Archive; all the links are in the spreadsheet, story by story. When I started this project back in May (here's the very first post), I knew I would find great resources at the Archive... but I never imagined it would be this comprehensive. There are materials here for readers at any level — K-12 students, college students, independent scholars, and all the book-lovers out there — to explore the storytelling traditions of Africa in real depth.

Some of those are public domain sources, and some are more recent publications available thanks to Controlled Digital Lending. If you are not aware of the current legal battle around Controlled Digital Lending, I would urge you to learn more about that and to lend your support. You can find out more here about the Internet Archive's legal fight in defense of their right to loan out digital copies of the physical books in its possession based on strict controls that mean only one copy of the book is ever in circulation at any one time:

Libraries lend books, and must continue to lend books: Internet Archive responds to publishers’ lawsuit

If you use Twitter, you can tweet your support with the hashtag #ControlledDigitalLending.

As I've explained in previous spreadsheet updates, you can do searches and create data filters at this shared spreadsheet of stories from Africa, and you can also copy the spreadsheet for your own use. For example, I have my own copy of the spreadsheet where I keep track of which stories have animals, stories I want to use for a "tiny tales" project, etc. etc.

Below are just a few of the books I've indexed since the last update; the links below go to the book at Internet Archive: so many beautiful books, and all just a click away thanks to Controlled Digital Lending. As you'll see, one of the new books is one that I wrote, using the great resources available online at the Archive. So, as always, THANK YOU, Internet Archive, for making it possible for us to learn about the great storytelling traditions of Africa this way.

Tchana. Sense Pass King

Wilson. The Great Minu

Berry. Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird

Bryan. The Adventures of Aku

Dresser. The Rainmaker's Dog

Onyefulu. Chinye

McDermott. Zomo the Rabbit

Gibbs. Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals, vol. 2

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tales from the Basotho

I've been sharing mostly books from western Africa lately, so today I have something from southern African instead: Tales from the Basotho by Minnie Postma.

Minnie Postma (1908-1989) was a South African writer who lived and worked both in South Africa and also in London. She grew up in the Orange Free State on the Lesotho border, and she spoke both Afrikaans and Sotho as a child, and her books later helped to popularize Basotho stories for an Afrikaans audience. You can find out more at Wikipedia (that's Afrikaans Wikipedia, but Google Translate can render the page in English).

This book was translated by Susie McDermid, a South African journalist who later settled in the United States, and she also wrote a very helpful introduction. There's a tale type and motif index in the back of the book supplied by John Vlach, a professor of African and African Diaspora Studies.

You'll find 23 stories in the book; here's a list of titles linked to their pages at the Internet Archive: The Giant Bird Mothermelle / Wolf and Jackal and the Beautiful Girl / The Outcast / Fenya-fenyane / Hen, Hawk, and the Needle / Toaqo, the Woman Who Ate People / Tortoise and Dove / The Guilty Woman / Monyohe, the Great Snake of the Deep Waters / Maliane and the Water Snake / Molaetsane / Obe, the Monster of the Dark Canyon / The Dove, the Heron, and Jackal / The Mother-in-law and the Clear Water / The Milk Tree / Jackal and Hen / The Whirlwind and the Land of the Half-men / Nanabolele, Who Shines in the Night / Sheep and Baboon / The Woman With the Big Thumbnail / Tsananapa / Masilo, Masiloyane, and the Old Woman / The Bride of Chief Bulane.

As you can see, it's a great mix of animal tale plus supernatural adventures too, very much representative of the great Sotho storytelling tradition. Enjoy!

Tales from the Basotho

by Minnie Postma

Africa at the Internet Archive: Cameroon and Nigeria

I have two beautiful children's books to share today, both inspired by traditional stories from western Africa, and both just a click away at the Internet Archive!

The first is Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon by Katrin Tchana.

The title itself is a great excuse to talk with students about the many varieties of English in Africa, and the importance of African language heritage in varieties of American English too, like AAVE and Gullah (I'll have more to say about that when I start writing about African American resources at the Internet Archive in February). The story is full of adventure; page by page, you get to see the heroine come into her own powers, surpassing the king.

The illustrations are by Trina Schart Hyman. This illustration shows the story's heroine with her animal helpers:

Tchana and Hyman have collaborated on other books. One of those, The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women, contains three different folktales from African (Egypt, Gambia, and Cameroon); here is an illustration for "The Marriage of Two Masters" (Gambia):

Another one of their books you can find at the Internet Archive is Changing Woman and Her Sister: Stories of Goddesses from Around the World, which includes two goddess from Africa: Isis (Egypt) and Mawu (Fon people of Benin). Here is Mawu:

And here is the frontispiece of the book; it shows "The Mother, who is the source of all goddess stories."

The second African folktale I want to feature today is In the Rainfield: Who Is the Greatest? by Isaac Olaleye.

Isaac Olaleye is a Nigerian writer, now residing in California (he's in his 80s, but I believe he is still with us!). Olaleye is also the author of fictional stories set in Africa, including Lake of the Big Snake: An African Rain Forest Adventure, Bitter Bananas, and Bikes for Rent!

The illustrations for this book are by Ann Grifalconi, a writer and artist that I've featured previously: Village of Round and Square Houses. The story is about the struggle among Wind, Fire, and Rain to determine who is the greatest of the three, and here's her rendering of the presence of fire in a gorgeous two-page spread:

And here is her rendering of Rain: wow!

So, children's books like these that develop a single story with vivid words and beautiful pictures are a great way to bring African folktales to life in your imagination... and you will find many more such children's books at the Internet Archive, with stories not just from Africa but from all around the world.

Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon

by Katrin Tchana

In the Rainfield: Who Is the Greatest?

by Isaac Olaleye

Africa at the Internet Archive: The Rainmaker's Dog

Today I want to share a really fascinating book that could be very useful to high school and college teachers, especially teachers of English language learners: The Rainmaker's Dog: International Folktales to Build Communicative Skills by Cynthia Dresser.

Dresser developed the book as a textbook for her students in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Zimbabwe, and it contains stories from Africa (6 stories from Central Africa, 8 stories from Western Africa, 4 stories from Eastern Africa, 3 stories from Southern Africa), along with stories from Haiti, Australia, and Asia. Here's how she explains the book's purpose and goals: "The Rainmaker's Dog is a book of transformation and adventure that will take the reader to different parts of the world, using folktales to build vital communication skills. Guided on this journey by characters from the folktales, students will experience the stories and then discuss and write about characters, solutions, new ideas and their own experiences."

The wonderful illustrations and text decorations are by Tom Paisrayi, an artist from Zimbabwe; Kate Lannas, also from Zimbabwe; and Katerine Moir, an artist from Swaziland in South Africa. 

The stories are illustrated:

Plus there are illustrations as writing prompts:

And graphic games, like this maze:

There are also lovely text decorations throughout, like this section page:

It's a really remarkable book, and I hope it will find new audiences and uses by being so easily accessible at the Internet Archive, just a click away. There are also lots of very affordable used copies for under $10 as you can see via BookFinder.com. Highly recommended!

The Rainmaker's Dog:

International Folktales

to Build Communicative Skills

by Cynthia Dresser.

Africa at the Internet Archive: Why Leopard Has Spots

New books are being added to the Internet Archive all the time, and I'm always excited when a new book of African folklore shows up, especially if it's one that I've been on the lookout for, like this one: Why Leopard Has Spots: Dan Stories From Liberia by Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret Lippert.

The reason I was looking for this one is that the illustrations are by Ashley Bryan, one of my favorite illustrators. You can find out more about his work in these previous posts. His style is instantly recognizable!

Won-Ldy Paye is a Dan storyteller from northeastern Liberia; his grandmother initiated him into the storytelling tradition, and he is also a drummer and dancer. You can find out more at his website, and you can also enjoy his work in the form of videos too! For example, here is The Bird that Ate the Bull.

Paye cowrote this book with Margaret Lippert, a folklorist and author who has collaborated with Paye on some other books also; they began working together in Seattle in the 1990s (Paye is now based in Connecticut). Here are three other books available at Internet Archive: The Talking Vegetables, Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile (stories which both appear in the Leopard book) and Head, Body, Legs. These three books are all illustrated by Julie Paschkis; you can find out more at her website.

So, enjoy all the illustrations and the stories too... plus the videos! There's a great world of stories awaiting you online. :-)