African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Roger Abrahams

Since Helen read a story from Roger Abrahams' African Folktales book, I thought I would use that as a prompt to do two more books from Roger Abrahams today, carrying on with this week's theme of excellent scholarly resources.

I'll start with The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture, published in 1983.

The book is a collection of essays by Abrahams covering a range of topics connected to poetic performance throughout the area of the Caribbean known as the West Indies (see Wikipedia), with essays dating back to the 1960s when Abrahams was doing field research in the Antilles.

Abrahams dedicated this book to John Szwed, who is his coauthor on this book, also published in 1983: After Africa: Extracts From British Travel Accounts and Journals of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries Concerning the Slaves, Their Manners, and Customs in the British West Indies. (Abrahams died in 2017, but John Szwed, who was born in 1936, is still with us!)

Each of the chapters of this book contains fascinating material... and there is even a chapter on Anancy Tales, which opens with testimony that dates back to 1816 from Matthew Gregory Lewis; you can find out more about Lewis here.

Plus of course I want to include both of Abrahams' monumental anthologies of African and African American folktales!

African Folktales:

Traditional Stories of the Black World

African American Folktales:

Stories from Black Traditions in the New World

All of these excellent books are just a click away at the Archive, all because of Conrolled Digital Lending, which creates a scholarly library that we can all access.

 The Man-of-Words in the West Indies:

Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture

by Roger Abrahams

After Africa: Extracts From British Travel Accounts and Journals

by Roger Abrahams and John Szwed