African Diaspora at the Internet Archive: Spreadsheet (2)

Well, it's already "Spreadsheet Friday" again! This week was really busy for me, so I didn't get a lot of work done on the African Diaspora Folktale Spreadsheet, but I made some progress! There are now 2600 stories from 37 different books.

And, of course, the big African Folktale Spreadsheet is available also (I ended up with over 10,000 individual stories there).

As I've explained in previous spreadsheet posts, you can search, sort, and filter this public sheet using all the usual Google Sheet features, and you can also make a copy of the sheet if you want to add your own columns, etc. The search is just by the story title, but that's a good place to begin. So, for example, if I'm looking for rabbits (and I'm always looking for rabbits!), I can search and get over 100 results!

I can also set up a filter so that the rabbit results are the only ones I see:

Those are just rabbits in the story titles; of course there are more rabbits out there. So, when I find a book that is a likely source to explore for rabbits, I can use the Internet Archive's own search tools to search the text of the book for rabbits. I just click on a link, check out the book (yay for Controlled Digital Lending!), and then I can search the book for all the rabbits in there. Here, for example, is Hughes' and Bontemps' Book of Negro Folklore: there are plenty of rabbits in there beyond just the stories with rabbit in the title! For example, I found this rabbit verse from a song along with some other animal references in the "Blues" section of the book:

You can see the search results BEFORE you check out the book, and you can also share the link with the search results already indicated too, which is a great way for teachers to introduce students to the power of search: as soon as the student gets there, they can see the search results and proceed accordingly! Here's the Hughes-Bontemps book with the rabbit search results in the link.

So, my little spreadsheet is really just a jumping-off point, a gateway into the Internet Archive where you can use the powerful text searches available there, helping you to find what you're looking for.

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: African-American Proverbs in Context

After a series of supernatural stories (yesterday was the dog ghosts!), I want to shift today to another incredibly important folk genre: proverbs. I've written about African proverb books at the Internet Archive (Week 21 was devoted to African proverbs), and today I want to write about a beautiful African American book of proverbs: African-American Proverbs in Context by Anand Prahlad.

The book is divided into three sections: there is a contextual theory framework in the first chapter, followed by Part One, 1930s-1960s: Proverbial Speech among the Ex-Enslaved, Speech Events with European-Americans, and Proverbs in Blues Lyrics: Creativity and Innovation, and then Part Two: Contemporary Speech Acts: Proverb Masters and Symbolic Meaning, and Proverb Speech Acts among Peers. There is also an Appendix of African American proverbs, and as the author explains, it is "the first collection of any size of African-American proverbs to provide contextual data, informant data, and informant's interpretation of proverb meaning," along with a detailed bibliography (and discography!) of sources. One of Prahlad's most important informants is Clara Abrams, his great-grandmother, born in 1898.

Some of Prahlad's reference works are also available at the Archive. He edited African American Folklore: An Encyclopedia for Students.

And he also edited The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore. The Archive has volumes covering A-F and covering G-P. Hopefully the third volume will make its way to the Archive also!

You can find out more at his website: PrahladAuthor.com

And I'll be back next time with more proverbs! Meanwhile, Prahlad's book about proverbs along with his reference books await you at the Internet Archive. :-)

African-American Proverbs in Context

by Anand Prahlad

 African American Folklore: An Encyclopedia for Students

edited by Anand Prahlad

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore

edited by Anand Prahlad

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Dog Ghosts

The full moon is finally here, so I have a final supernatural item for today's African Diaspora folklore book: John Mason Brewer's Dog Ghosts and the Word on the Brazos, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

This 1976 publication is a reprint of two of Brewer's books: The Word on the Brazos: Negro Preacher Tales of the Brazos Bottoms of Texas from 1953 and Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales from 1958. 

You might recall that I wrote about the remarkable John Mason Brewer earlier this month; see that blog post for more about his life and career: American Negro Folklore. I wanted to include this book today because... ghosts! (See the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday posts for more of the supernatural.) You can see the "dog ghosts" from the title of course, and you can use the power of the Internet Archive search to find all the references to ghosts:

There are so many wonderful things about Internet Archive books, and search is one of the best in my opinion.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of supernatural books, and I'll be back tomorrow with... proverbs!

Dog Ghosts and the Word on the Brazos

by John Mason Brewer

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: The Dark Way

Since I've done a series of supernatural stories for the full moon this week (see the posts from Sunday and Monday), I wanted to share one more supernatural book today; it's by the great Virginia Hamilton! I've written earlier about her books A Ring of Tricksters and The People Could Fly, and here's her supernatural anthology: The Dark Way: Stories from the Spirit World.

The stories come from all over the world, and the illustrations are by Lambert Davis. There are four African and Diaspora stories, starting with the legend of Rolling Rio from North Carolina:

... a Bouki and Malice story form Haiti: 

... a Kikuyu legend from Africa about the swallowing earth:

... and the African American legend of the witch's skinny:

So, enjoy these stories and all the rest, and I'll be back with some more ghost stories for the full moon tomorrow.

The Dark Way:

Stories from the Spirit World

by Virginia Hamilton

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Dark-Thirty and Tailypo

After writing about the Moaning Bones and the Headless Haunt yesterday, I thought I would share two more books in the supernatural genre! 

First is The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia McKissack.

The book contains 10 different supernatural tales, and the illustrations are by Brian Pinkney, son of illustrator Jerry Pinkney (see below). And it won both Newbery Honors and also a Coretta Scott King Award! Here is a list of links to the individual stories: The Legend of Pin Oak / We Organized / Justice / The 11:59 / The Sight / The Woman in the Snow / The Conjure Brother / Boo Mama / The Gingi / The Chicken-Coop Monster.

McKissack wrote over 100 books, and you can find many more of her books at the Internet Archive. For more about McKissack's life and career, see Wikipedia.

The other book is Tailypo: A Newfangled Tall Tale by Angela Shelf Medearis.

The illustrations are by Sterling Brown, with some great two-page spreads.

Angela Shelf Medearis is a prolific author of both children's books and also cookbooks. The Internet Archive has many of her books available:

The story of Taily-Po is a folktale that Joel Chandler Harris recorded in the 19th century as a Brer Rabbit story; you can read the Joel Chandler Harris version edited here, or the published version in Uncle Remus Returns. 

The illustrations in Harris's book are by A. B. Frost:

Here's the illustration by Jerry Pinkney in Julius Lester's version:

I wrote my own version for a class project too. :-)

The full moon is coming soon, and the Internet Archive has all the supernatural stories you need to get in the mood. Enjoy!

The Dark-Thirty:

Southern Tales of the Supernatural

by Pat McKissack

Tailypo: A Newfangled Tall Tale

by Angela Shelf Medearis

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Headless Haunt and Moaning Bones

I'm going to start the week with a genre of story that is incredibly important in the African American storytelling tradition: ghosts and the supernatural! Here are two books by James Haskins which are just a click away at the Internet Archive: The Headless Haunt and Other African-American Ghost Stories and Moaning Bones: African-American Ghost Stories.

Here are the stories you will find in each collection:

Headless Haunt. Ain't I Got to Believe / Wait Till Emmett Comes / It Vanished Like a Shadow / The Deserted Village / Little Nero and the Magic Tea Cakes / The Ghost in Black Silk / The Ghost Log Cabin / Uncle Henry and the Dog Ghost / I Was Born With a Caul / Daddy and the Plat-eye Ghost / Two Boys and a Plat-eye / Sometimes They Come in a Whirlwind / A Night at Pickey's / Strange All Through / The Ghosts of a Jealous Man / Her Husband's Ghost / Calvin Copley and the Widow / The Saturday-night Fiddler / A Treasure-hunting Story / The Headless Haunt / I Don't Want to Fool With No Spirits / The Girl and the Plat-eye / The Half-clad Ghost / The Spirit of a Friend / How Jack Became a Jack-o'-Lantern / The End of Hock / The Ghost in the Stetson / Hold Him, Tabb / The Ghosts of Cedar Creek / The Ghost of the Yankee Soldier / The Ghost of a Man the Yankees Killed / I See Spirits / Dead Aaron / Protection Against Ghosts, Spirits, and Haunts

Moaning Bones. Big Fraid and Li'l Fraid / The Ghost in the Backseat / Black Tom / You Shot Me Once / Cinderella and the Buried Treasure / The Ghost Yearling / Find My Child! / The Ghost of Gabe / The Ghost Owl / The Haunted Stateroom / The Hole They Couldn't Fill / Looks Like Jesus / Old Hy-ty / The Lake of the Dead / The Moaning Bones / Old Moccasin's Ghost / The Mysterious Pile of Quilts

James Haskins was a prolific author who wrote over a hundred books on African and African American themes and topics; you can find MANY of this books at the Internet Archive: books by James Haskins. 

For more about his life and work, see Wikipedia, and you can find his obituary in the New York Times; he died in 2005. This photo is from the James Haskins Collection held by the University of Florida Library.

So, a full moon is coming in just a couple of days. You can curl up with one of these books and read yourself a scary story by the light of that full moon... if you dare!

Moaning Bones:

African-American Ghost Stories

by James Haskins

The Headless Haunt and

Other African-American Ghost Stories 

by James Haskins