African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Two Evenings in Saramaka

Continuing on with Caribbean traditions this week, here's a remarkable book about the storytelling traditions of Suriname: Two Evenings in Saramaka by Richard Price and Sally Price.

The book documents the stories that were told at three different funeral wakes on two evenings in Saramaka, based on field work conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. You can find out more about the Afro-Suriname people of Saramaka at Wikipedia, and you can find out more about Suriname also. 

What is documented in the book is the story performance which is very different from the capturing of a story in literary form as told by a single storyteller. Instead, this is a collective storytelling effort,  performed within and for the community. To get a sense of what that is like, here's a screenshot of a search for "Spider" in the book (click on the image for a larger view):

There are also musical transcriptions for 60 songs, and one of the stories is presented in the original Saramaka creole as well as the English translation. Here's one of the songs about Anasi (click on the image for a larger view):

You can read more about Richard Price's work at Wikipedia, and Richard and Sally Price have a wonderful website too: RichAndSally.net. Here's a picture of a Saramaka chief's funeral at the site: 

There are other books from Richard Price at the Internet Archive also about Afro-Suriname traditions. Here are just two of them:

Travels With Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination is an award-winning account of a Saramaka healer named Tooy:

The book First-Time: The Historical Vision of an African American People is an award-winning history of the people of Saramaka in their own words (translated into English):

So, jump in; these are just a few of the remarkable books you can borrow from the Internet Archive, thanks to Controlled Digital Lending.

Two Evenings in Saramaka

by Richard Price and Sally Price

Travels With Tooy: History, Memory,

and the African American Imagination

by Richard Price

First-Time: The Historical Vision

of an African American People

by Richard Price