Saturday, September 3, 2022

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folklore

For today's public domain book, it's Fairy Tales from Brazil: How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folklore by Elsie Spicer Eells, published in 1917.


Elsie Spicer Eells lived in Brazil for several years where her husband was a missionary, and that is when she began collecting this stories; you can find out more at Wikipedia

There are not many sources for Brazilian stories in English, which makes this book by Eells especially useful, and I've picked out several stories that are good candidates for the public domain anthology to go with the Reader's Guide to African Diaspora Folktales at the Internet Archive. You can read them here: How the Rabbit Lost His Tail, How the Toad Got His Bruises, How the Monkey Got Food When He Was Hungry, Why the Bananas Belong to the Monkey and Why the Monkey Still Has a Tail. As you can see from the titles, the monkey has taken on an important role as a trickster in the Brazilian stories.

There's also a LibriVox audio version of this book at the Archive.


So, if you are curious to read some folktales from Brazil, this book is a place to start!

by Elsie Spicer Eells





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