Africa at the Internet Archive: Guirma and Haskett

Here I am starting Week 36 of the African book series, and I see there are SO MANY BOOKS I still want to write about, although I'm also hoping to shift over to African American and Caribbean books for Black History Month in February... so for these last two weeks of January, I'll try to squeeze in some favorite books I haven't blogged about yet.

Here are two lovely books of stories from western Africa for today: Princess of the Full Moon by Frédéric Guirma and Grains of Pepper: Folktales from Liberia by Edythe Rance Haskett. For both of these books, the authors also did the artwork!

Frédéric Guirma, who was born in 1931, is a Mossi writer and politician from Burkina Faso; you can find out more about him at Wikipedia. He was born in Ouagadougou, the capitol of what was then Upper Volta; the country's name was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984. When Upper Volta gained its independence in 1960, Guirma became his country's first ambassador to the United States, and he later had a career as a United Nations diplomat. Here he is meeting with President Kennedy:

Guirma wrote this book in French based on stories he heard as a child, and he also did the beautiful illustrations. Here you can see the king and his beautiful daughter:

These are the musicians performing at her lavish wedding:

But later the princess will confront a terrible monster; here's the monster:

Guirma is also the author of another wonderful book: Tales of Mogho: African Stories from Upper Volta. The Internet Archive does not have this book yet, but I'll certainly update this post if the book appears. (Every couple of months I check the Archive for all the books in my personal library to see if any of them have been added, and because I do have a copy of Tales of Mogho, that means I'm actively on the lookout for it.)

You can see Burkina Faso and also Liberia here in this map:

Edythe Haskett worked as a teacher in Liberia in the 1960s, and she collected these 25 Vai folktales and proverbs from her students there. Much as with Ellis's book of Vai stories published in 1914, Negro Culture in West Africa, Haskett felt a strong connection as an African American writer to the Vai stories she heard in Liberia. Haskett provides a brief overview of the history of Liberia in the book's introduction, with an emphasis on the American Colonization Society and the African Americans who settled in Liberia. 

The book's title alludes to the names "Pepper Coast" and "Grain Coast" which were used by European traders in reference to the melegueta pepper, or "grain of paradise," a pepper-like spice which grows in Liberia. When I Googled to find a picture, I saw these "grains of paradise" peppercorns for sale from Iya Foods (Nigeria) at Amazon:

The book's title page states that the illustrations are by Musu Miatta, and when you read the author's note at the end of the book, you learn that this is the Vai name that the students in her art classes gave her: "musu" means mother or woman, and "miatta" means kind or beloved. I would have liked to take an art class with Edythe Haskett; the illustrations she created for this book are lovely! They show scenes of everyday life, like this:

And there are also supernatural moments, like when these yams come to life:

Haskett is also the author of another book, Some Gold, a Little Ivory: Country Tales from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which I hope will eventually show up at the Internet Archive, and I'll update this post if/when it does. :-)

So, both books await you, just a click away at the Internet Archive!

Princess of the Full Moon

by Frédéric Guirma

 Grains of Pepper: Folktales from Liberia

by Edythe Rance Haskett