African Diaspora at Internet Archive: The Signifying Monkey

Since "Signifying Monkey" was such an important part of yesterday's book, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me! Narrative Poetry From the Black Oral Tradition, I wanted to make sure to write about this important book today: The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., just a click away at the Internet Archive.

This book, published in 1988, won the American Book Award, and it has its own Wikipedia article. Gates's interests in this book are more literary than folkloric, applying the idea of "signifying" to the work of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Ishmael Reed. Part One, however, connects Gates's literary criticism to African folklore and mythology: A Myth of Origins: Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey. In this chapter, Gates looks at the Middle Passage and what it means for the Africans captured and enslaved to bring their culture with them, and how a new African culture emerged in the Americas. Gates focuses on the figure of the trickster, and specifically on the Yoruba trickster, Esu-Elegbara.

And on that subject I want to share again a book I wrote about in the African series at this blog: The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight by Robert Doane Pelton. You can find out more here about Esu, along with Ananse stories from the Ashanti of Ghana, Legba stories from the Fon of Benin, and Ogo-Yurugu stories from the Dogon of Mali. 

Plus one more wonderful book to share on this topic: From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom by John W. Roberts.

So much goodness, and all available at the Internet Archive, thanks to Controlled Digital Lending.

The Signifying Monkey:

A Theory of African American Literary Criticism

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

From Trickster to Badman:

The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom

by John W. Roberts