African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel

I thought I'd start off this new week with a fabulous anthology edited by the folklorist Alan Dundes: Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, published in 1981.

There is all kinds of great material here; these are just some of the writers you will find in the pages of this wonderful book: Zora Neale Hurston, Eldridge Cleaver, Sterling Brown, Ralph Ellison, H. Rap Brown, Langston Hughes, and so many others.

The book is divided into these sections: Folk and Lore, On Origins, Folk Speech, Verbal Art (such a great section: proverbs, blues, dozens, signifying, toasts), Folk Belief, Folk Music, Folk Narrative (of course that's the section of most interest to me!), and Folk Humor.

So, you've got almost 700 pages of great material to explore here, just a click away at the Internet Archive!

Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel:

Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore

by Alan Dundes