African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Suriname Folklore

I wanted to follow up yesterday's post about the Saramaka storytellers of Suriname with an earlier, and also remarkable, work on Suriname storytellers by writers who are familiar to readers of this blog, Melville and Frances Herskovits. The book is: Suriname Folklore, published in 1936.

As you would expect from the comprehensive anthropological approach taken by the Herskovitses in their other books, this book is huge, appx. 800 pages long, documenting over 150 stories with notes for each story. There is a long introduction, appx. 150 pages long, about the history and culture of Suriname. Then come the stories, over 300 pages, along with over 50 pages of riddles, and then over 200 pages dedicated to the songs and music. 

The stories (which are called "Anansi-tori") are presented in facing-text with creole on the one side, and an English translation on the other (click on the image for a larger view): 

The songs and dances have the musical transcription:

This book also has a companion volume, published 2 years earlier, in 1934: Rebel Destiny: Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana, also available at the Internet Archive. This book provides a narrative of the time that the Herskovitses spent in Suriname (Dutch Guiana at the time; more about the Dutch colonization of the Guianas in South America at Wikipedia).

You might remember the Herskovitses from their monumental book on the storytelling traditions of Benin: Dahomean Narrative: A Crosscultural Analysis., also available at the Internet Archive. This book, published in 1958, collects over 150 stories from Fon storytellers in Benin (French Dahomey) as told in the 1930s and then translated into English. 

You can find out more about the life and career of Melville Herskovits at Wikipedia, and thanks to Controlled Digital Lending at the Internet Archive, you can read the results of the Herskovitses' work for yourself; the books are just a click away:

Suriname Folklore

by Melville and Frances Herskovits

Rebel Destiny: Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana

by Melville and Frances Herskovits