African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Anansi the Spider Man

Since I finished up with Philip Sherlock last week, I wanted to start this week with his Anansi books! Here's the main one: Anansi the Spider Man.

The illustrations here are by Marcia Brown. Artists always have a hard choice with "tiger" in African (where tiger refers to a panther) and African Diaspora stories, especially in places like Jamaica that are without big cats. So, she drew Tiger as a tiger; here's Tiger and Sis Duck:

Here is a list of the stories you will find in that book: From Tiger to Anansi / Brother Breeze and the Pear Tree / Anansi and the Old Hag / Anansi and Turtle and Pigeon / Kisander / The Kling Kling Bird / Bandalee / Yung-Kyung-Pyung / Anansi and the Plantains / Anansi and Fish Country / Ticky-Picky Boom-Boom / Anansi and the Alligator Eggs / Anansi and the Crabs / The Quarrel.

Plus, there is also this smaller collection: The Illustrated Anansi.

This book has lots of colorful illustrations by Petrina Wright; here you can see Alligator and Anansi (who is imagined as more person than spider):

These are the stories you will find: From Tiger to Anansi / Anansi and Turtle and Pigeon / The Quarrel / Anansi and the Crabs.

Sherlock's work was an important source for my collection of "tiny tales" about Anansi from Caribbean sources: Tiny Tales of Anansi (the stories are just 100 words each!).

You can also get that book as an epub or PDF, or even listen to me reading the stories, here: Anansi.LauraGibbs.net.

There can never be too many Anansi stories IMO! Enjoy!

Anansi the Spider Man

by Philip Sherlock

The Illustrated Anansi

by Philip Sherlock

Tiny Tales of Anansi

by Laura Gibbs

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Jamaica Anansi Stories

Yesterday I wrote about Martha Warren Beckwith's book of Jamaican folklore (including proverbs), and I wanted to follow up today with her monumental study of Anansi stories in Jamaica: Jamaica Anansi Stories, just a click away at the Internet Archive. (The title page is a little skewed, but don't worry: the rest of the book is fine.)

The book contains over 150 folktales (many of them in multiple versions), plus a huge collection of riddles too! Here is a list of stories with links to their pages at the Internet Archive: Tying Tiger / Tiger as Substitute / Tiger as Riding-horse / Tiger's Sheep-skin Suit / Tiger Catching the Sheep-thief / Tiger's Breakfast / Eggs and Scorpions / Tiger's Bone-hole / The Christening / Eating Tiger's Guts / Throwing Away Knives / Grace Before Meat / Day-time Trouble / New Names / Long-shirt / Shut Up in the Pot / House in the Air / Goat on the Hill-side / Dog and Dog-head / Tacoomah's Corn-piece / Anansi and the Tar-baby / Inside the Cow / Cunnie-more-than-father / The Duckano Tree / Food and Cudgel / The Riddle / Anansi and Brother Dead / Brother Dead and the Brindle Puppy / The Cowitch and Mr. Foolman / Dry-head and Anansi / The Yam-hills / The Law Against Back-biting / Fling-a-mile / But-but and Anansi / Tumble-bug and Anansi / Horse and Anansi / Anansi in Monkey Country / Curing the Sick / Anansi, White-belly and Fish / Goat's Escape / Turtle's Escape / Fire and Anansi / Quit-quit and Anansi / Spider Marries Monkey's Daughter / The Chain of Victims / Why Tumble-bug Rolls in the Dung / Why John-crow Has a Bald Head / Why Dog Is Always Looking / Why Rocks at the River Are Covered With Moss / Why Ground-dove Complains / Why Hog Is Always Grunting / Why Toad Croaks / Why Woodpecker Bores Wood / Why Crab Is Afraid After Dark / Why Mice Are No Bigger / Rat's Wedding / Cockroach Stories / Hunter, Guinea-hen and Fish / Rabbit Stories / The Animal Race / The Fasting Trial / Man Is Stronger / The Pea That Made a Fortune / Settling the Father's Debt / Mr. Lenaman's Corn-field / Simon Tootoos / The Tree-wife / Sammy the Comferee / Grandy-do-an'-do / Jack and Harry / Pea-fowl as Messenger / The Barking Puppy / The Singing Bird / Two Sisters / Asoonah / The Greedy Child / Alimoty and Aliminty / The Fish Lover / Juggin Straw Blue / The Witch and the Grain of Peas / Bosen Corner / The Three Dogs / Andrew and His Sisters / The Hunter / Man-snake as Bridegroom / The Girls Who Married the Devil / Bull as Bridegroom / The Two Bulls / Ballinder Bull / Bird Arinto / Tiger Softens His Voice / Hidden Names / Anansi and Mr. Able / The King's Three Daughters / The Dumb Child / The Dumb Wife / Leap, Timber, Leap / The Boy Fools Anansi / The Water Crayfish / Ali Baba and Kissem / Bull-of All-the-land / The Boiling Pot / The Twelve One-eyed Men / Bird and Hunter / Jack and the Devil Errant / The Magic Hat and the Staff of Life / Uncle Green and Jack / Big Begum and Little Begum / The Fool and the Wise Brother / The Children and the Witch / The Boy and the Mermaid / Difficult Tasks / The Grateful Beasts / Jack and the Bean-stalk / Jack and the Devil / Jack's Riddle / Jack as Fortune-teller / Robin as Fortune-teller / Jack and the Grateful Dead / The Boy and His Master / The Language of Beasts / The Three Pieces of Advice / Three Brothers and the Life-tree / The Skilful Brothers / The Three Sillies / A Misunderstanding / Big-head, Big-belly, and Little-foot / The Goat in the Lion's Den / The Donkey, the Cat and the Lion's Head / Clever Molly May / Dancing to Anansi's Fiddle / Anansi Claims the Dinner / Anansi Seeks His Fortune / The Pannier-jar / Anansi Kills His Grandmother / White Belly and Anansi / Monkey Hunts Anansi / Anansi and the Pig Coming From Market / The Fifer / In Come Murray / Tacoomah Makes a Dance / Anansi Makes a Dance / Red Yam / Guzzah Man / Fowl and Pretty Poll / The Cumbolo / John-crow and Fowl at Court. / Wooden Ping-ping and Cock. / Animal Talk / The Clock / Two Jugs of Rum / Cutting the Cotton-tree / Walking at Night / The Dray Packed With Sugar / Two Duppies by the Fire / Duppies in a House / A Rolling Calf / Louse and Dog-flea / Ground-lizard and Ground-rat / Puss and Dog / Buying Meat / Monkey and Goat / Anansi and Tiger / Tacoomah and Anansi / The Gourd of Water / The Pan of Water / What Money Can Buy / Jamaican Riddles.

Beckwith collaborated with musicologist Helen Roberts (as she did also for the Jamaica Folklore book), so you will find music for the stories where the storyteller sang a song as part of the story, as here in The Fish Lover:

One of the most valuable things about this book is the Beckwith provides detailed comparative information for the stories helping to make clear connections to stories told by African American storytellers in the United States, and also the original African stories (there are footnotes for the stories too, but make sure to see the comparative commentary in the back of the book). The book was published in 1924, and it reflects all the important bibliography in African and African American folklore up to that point in time.

Beckwith also acknowledges her sources, so you can use the search feature at Internet Archive to look at all the stories reported for a given storyteller, like George Parkes for example:

Beckwith's book was one of the most valuable sources for the book of Anansi Tiny Tales that I published back in 2020. You can find that book at the Internet Archive also, with an free audiobook and other formats available too. There are 200 Anansi stories in there, each just 100 words long.

So, there is plenty of Anansi for you to read and enjoy now, and I'll be back tomorrow with even more Anansi!

Jamaica Anansi Stories

by Martha Beckwith

Tiny Tales of Anansi

by Laura Gibbs

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tiny Tales from Africa, volume 2

Normally on Friday I would be doing a spreadsheet update (see last week), but I have something exciting I wanted to share right away: I have now published the SECOND volume of the Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals. I generated the book using Pressbooks just yesterday, so you'll find it now at the Internet Archive, and it's also available as an EPUB and other formats at Africa.LauraGibbs.net.

You can also find volume 1 at the Internet Archive, and here's the blog post I wrote about that book back in October: Tiny Tales from Africa.

Just like the first volume, this volume has 200 stories, and each story is just 100 words long. There are pictures for a lot of the stories too, thanks to all the generous photographers who share their work with CC licenses for reuse at Wikimedia and at Flickr, etc. 

The stories are not in a specific order, although there are mostly creation and aetiological stories at the beginning of the book, followed by stories about the most famous tricksters (like Tortoise, Rabbit, and Spider), and then more stories about animals, and finally stories that feature both humans and animals together. You can jump in anywhere, and with the search power of Internet Archive, you can search the book for any animal you are especially interested in. For example: here's a search for crocodile: 

Or you can search by a specific culture or country, like Liberia:

There's also an audiobook version at SoundCloud:

Laura Gibbs · Tiny Tales from African: The Animals, Volume 2

Each of the stories has a blog post that goes with it with additional notes and information about the story; you'll find the list of blog posts here: Volume 2. I've also updated the randomizer that you will see in the sidebar of this blog, and the "more info" links in those random stories will take you to the blog post for that story.

Very short stories like this are a bit unusual, I know, but it gives you a chance to quickly get an awareness of a huge number of folktales, and then when you find a specific animal character or a specific region you want to study in depth, then you can find more books to read with longer stories and even more detail. All the sources I used for this book are online at the Internet Archive (and I've blogged about many of those books at this blog!), so that means you can take a look at the original, longer versions of the story to see what I started from each time I created the 100-word version.

In addition to being free, these books are CC-licensed OER (online educational resources) so that teachers can adapt the materials in whatever ways might be most useful to them; the HTML version gives you a nice, clean text version if you want to copy-and-paste the text in order to adapt, remix, and reuse for your own purposes. You can find all the CC-license details for both Volume 1 and Volume 2, and if you have questions about that, just let me know. 

So, there you go: Volume 1 AND Volume 2 both await you at the Internet Archive, and if all goes well, I should have Volume 3 ready to go in April. There are already lots of stories taking shape for that next book which you can see here: new African tiny tales for volume 3. Enjoy! 

Tiny Tales from Africa:

The Animals, volume 2

by Laura Gibbs

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tiny Tales from Africa

So today's post is a little different: I get to feature my own book of African folktales at the Internet Archive today! Here it is: Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals by... me! :-)

I finished publishing the book just yesterday, uploaded a copy to Internet Archive, and then the Internet Archive worked its magic so that the PDF I uploaded is a full-fledged Internet Archive book that you can read, search, link to, download, etc. So, for example, you can do a search for all the rabbits, and read through the book going from one rabbit to the next using the navigate-by-search-results option; you can also share the actual search results by means of a link: Rabbit.

The book is also available as an EPUB and in other formats here: Africa.LauraGibbs.net. There's even an audiobook. :-)

Laura Gibbs · Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals (volume 1)

As you can see from the list of stories there in the audiobook index, the book contains 200 "tiny tales" with animal characters from a wide variety of storytelling traditions; each story is 100 words long. You can see the list of sources, with links to their Internet Archive versions too, here: List of Sources. Some of the books on that list have been featured here already; other books will be appearing here in November (I'll have more to say about the November focus in tomorrow's post).

I started writing 100-word stories for my dad about two years ago, and you can see all the "Tiny Tale" books that I've published so far here: 100 Words. The books are all free to download (PDF, EPUB, etc.), and they are also available as Kindles and as paperbacks from Amazon. 

I really like writing 100-word stories: I try to make sure they really feel like stories, not just summaries of stories, and because they are so short, it is easy to include 200 of them in a single book. A friend of mine calls them "potato-chip stories" because you can't stop reading them once you get started. That's my hope anyway. :-)

In addition to being free, these books are CC-licensed OER (online educational resources) so that teachers can adapt the materials in whatever ways might be most useful to them; you can find out more about that in the Teacher's Guide that I prepared, with excerpts from the first three books paired with storytelling ideas.

This book of African animal tales is the first one where I've included illustrations, which was really fun to do! I used Fotor's GoArt to create "sketch" versions of CC-licensed photographs, and I also used some greyscale versions of photos with the Fotor editor; I went with these black-and-white options so that the photos would work in the paperback version also. (The image credits are in the back of the book.)

As you can see from the title of the book, I have optimistically labeled it as "volume 1" because there are still hundreds of animal stories from Africa I want to retell. The next volume should be ready in January; I've already got all the stories I need, so it's just a matter of doing all the editing and book preparation in November and December to get it ready to go. You can browse through the stories now if you are curious: African animal tales for volume 2.

Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this book... I had more fun and also learned more writing this book than any other of the books that I've done, and that makes me optimistic that it will be fun and useful for readers also! 

Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals

by Laura Gibbs