Tricksters. The Pot of Wisdom: Ananse Stories

Finishing up this week of spider stories, I wanted to share another collection from Africa today: The Pot of Wisdom: Ananse Stories by Adwoa Badoe, ten wonderful Anansi stories just a click away at the Internet Archive.

Adwoa Badoe was born and educated in Ghana; she now lives in Canada. The beautiful illustrations are by Baba Wagué Diakité, an artist from Mali (we've read several of his books for Anansi Book Club!). Here is his depiction of Ananse choosing one of the magic woman's pots. Anansi is being greedy, of course, and he chooses the biggest pot!

And here you can see Ananse and the birds in the famous story of the trickster who decides to go flying:

These were stories that Adwoa Badoe heard growing up in Ghana, and now you can read the stories for yourself. Plus there are so many great Anansi books out there; I'll be sure to have another Anansi week soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the stories that are here:

The Pot of Wisdom:

Ananse Stories

by Adwoa Badoe

Tricksters. Annancy Stories

Because I'm thinking about Anansi illustrations today (I just added some information about the illustrations by Ann Grifalconi in this week's Anansi Book Club book), for the Anansi book here I thought I would include this remarkable book from Pamela Colman Smith (YES, she did the famous tarot deck), which is a set of illustrated Anansi stories from Jamaica published in 1899: Annancy Stories.

Smith lived in Jamaica as a young woman in the 1890s; you can find out more about her life and career at Wikipedia. She actually published two books of Jamican folklore, but I have not been able to find any way to access the other book. Thank goodness, this book is just a click away for you to read and enjoy at the Internet Archive!

Here you can see how she has drawn Annancy, who is recognizably a spider, but his rival Tiger is not a tiger (and of course they don't have tigers in Jamaica, or in Africa; "tiger" just means any kind of big colorful cat, like leopards in Africa)... instead, Tiger is recognizable by his striped clothing:

Here is Anansi in "Fish Country" with the fishes:

If you are familiar with her famous tarot deck, you can see her style immediately in the way she draws the human characters, as here:

You can read more about Pamela Colman Smith's Tarot deck in this article at CNN: The woman behind the world's most famous tarot deck was nearly lost in history.

There is a mix of stories in the book; some about Anansi, while others are about human characters, other animals, or supernatural creatures. The title of the book, "Annancy Stories," reflects the way that folktales are all called "Annancy Stories," whether they are about Anansi or not -- and the reason for that is a story of its own, of course. The story of how Anansi won all the stories is a famous tale told both in Africa and in the Caribbean.

So, jump in and enjoy: the stories are told with some Jamaican patois, but they are very readable... and there are illustrations for every story!

Annancy Stories
by Pamela Colman Smith

Tricksters. Royal Antelope and Spider

After yesterday's Hausa stories about Gizo the Spider, I wanted to share stories from yet another cultural tradition in western Africa, so here are some stories Kasilo the Spider from Mende storytellers in Liberia: Royal Antelope and Spider: West African Mende Tales by Marion Kilson, published in 1976 (and while that does not sound old to me, I need to keep reminding myself that it's almost 50 years ago...).

You can read about the Mende people, who live mostly in Sierra Leone, at Wikipedia; Kilson collected these stories in Sierra Leone in 1959 and 1960. She then returned to Sierra Leone in 1976 and did additional field work at that time. This book is the product of the work she did on those two stays, and in addition to the stories she provides an overview of Mende culture with lots of detail about Mende storytelling traditions in the opening chapters of the book.

There are 100 stories in the book, including the Mende text for all the stories, including lots of stories about Spider. For example:  Spider and His Children, the famous story about how Spider got his narrow waist by having all his children pull him in different directions. 

Even if you are just using the Mende text to learn the animals' names, it is so useful to have it there. So, whether you're reading in English or in Mende or both, there are lots of Spider stories here to enjoy and learn from, along with stories about the tiny royal antelope, another great trickster character from western Africa to whom I will have to dedicate a week at this blog post later on!

 Royal Antelope and Spider:

West African Mende Tales

 by Marion Kilson

Tricksters: Hausa Spider Stories

This is a week devoted to the trickster spider; he goes by the name of Anansi (and its variants) in Akan and related languages in Ghana, but the spider has other names in other African languages. There are trickster spiders from many cultures in Africa! Today I wanted to feature some trickster spider stories from the Hausa tradition, where "Gizo" is the spider's name. One place you can find some Gizo stories is in this collection of Hausa stories translated by Neil Skinner: Hausa Tales and Traditions, which is just a click away at Internet Archive:

You will find over 250 stories in this book, starting with animal stories, and Spider gets to go first among the animals! You can see there are over 50 pages of Spider stories here:

Those animal stories are followed by stories about human characters and types, then moralizing stories, stories of men and women, a whole section of dilemma tales, and then stories involving legal disputes.

Skinner is translating the work of Frank Edgar, who published a monumental collection of Hausa stories (3 volumes of Tatsuniyoyi Na Hausa), and who also left behind a massive collection of unpublished Hausa writings. Edgar's work began in 1910, translating materials that he received from J. A. Burdon, and then Edgar himself began collecting Hausa stories in Nigeria, intended to provide British civil servants with materials for studying Hausa language and learning about Hausa culture. If you want to see the Hausa texts by Frank Edgar, you can hop on over to Hathi Trust, where all three volumes are available (being in the public domain): 

There is an index in the back of Skinner's book that you can use to locate where to find Edgar's stories in Skinner's book:

Likewise, if you are reading in Skinner's book, each story contains a reference to Edgar, as you can see here, where the story about Spider and Hyena points you to story #108 in the third volume of Edgar about Gizo and Kura!

So, enjoy the treasure-trove of Spider stories in Skinner's book at Internet Archive, knowing you can also find the Hausa texts online too, all just a click away thanks to the power of digital libraries.

Hausa Tales and Traditions

by Neil Skinner

ABC 31: Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird

So here we are: the first Anansi Book Club book for 2023! This was one of my favorite projects from 2022, and I am excited to keep on reading more books this year! You can see the January Calendar at the website, and you can also see all the Book Club posts from 2022 here at the blog (and additional information at the website about previous months). 

I'm excited that we have a book by a brilliant writer and a wonderful illustrator to get things started: Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird by James Berry with illustrations by Ann Grifalconi. And since I'm doing spider stories this week for #TricksterChaos, I'll let this be my trickster post for today too!

So, I'll have lots to say about this book and it's story, and also about James Berry and Ann Grifalconi, as I update this blog post every day this week. 

As James Berry explains in the introduction to the book, he has taken a traditional story about Anansi from Ghana and retold it in the Caribbean rhythms of his homeland, Jamaica. Berry was born in Jamaica in 1924 and relocated to England in 1948, and he went on to become one of the most famous members of this "Windrush generation" of West Indians living in the U.K.; you can find out more about Berry's remarkable life and career at Wikipedia. In 1990, Berry was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to poetry, so that makes him Sir James Berry! Here's a portrait from the British Library: 

Berry is best known for his poetry, but he also wrote prose, including several Anansi books. 

The Anansi story that Berry has told here starts out as a traditional "trading-up" type of chain tale, which is popular all over Africa. The stories are often told about tricksters, but they can also be told about other types of protagonists. You can also find "trading-up" chain tales in other parts of the world. Consider, for example, this ancient Buddhist jataka tale which starts from a dead mouse, trading up until the dead mouse becomes an immense fortune. In some types of "trading-up" chain tales the trickster is manipulating the situation to his advantage, as in this Anansi story: How Kwaku Ananse Won a Kingdom with a Grain of Corn. In Berry's story, Ananse is not tricking the people he interacts with; instead, he just happens to have what each character needs as he goes along the way -- but I do like the way that elephants in this story, when they meet Anansi, suspect that he might be trying to trick them; that's always a good operating assumption to have when you meet Anansi!

Then, what happens at the end of the story, is a different kind of twist, taking the story in a different direction than the typical chain tale... ending up with a proverb, as you can see in the title of the book itself: Don't leave an elephant to go and chase a bird. That is a proverb that can stand on its own, of course, but it is even better when combined with a story. There's no telling whether the proverb came first, or the story; you can see both types of phenomena, not just in African proverb and storytelling traditions, where a proverb ends up giving birth to a story and also where a story gets alluded to by a proverb. In either case, once a proverb-story is in circulation, people who are "in the know" can invoke the story just by stating the proverb. If you say "Don't leave an elephant to go and chase a bird," that conjures up Anansi in this story, much like saying "Slow and steady wins the race" conjures up the European version of the race between the tortoise and the hare (the African versions of that story, however, are something else entirely!). 

So, now you can see why I really love this book: it's got a chain tale AND it's a proverb-story. That means this book is pressing my two biggest storytelling buttons at once! 

Plus, the illustrations by Ann Grifalaconi are so much fun! Figuring out just how to draw Anansi can be very challenging: spider? human? something in-between? Grifalconi has chosen a stylized human-like way to represent Anansi; he definitely looks human-like, but at the same time he is not drawn like the other humans, as you can see in this scene where you can see Anansi and the blacksmith:

There's an artist's note at the beginning of the book where Grifalconi says she was inspired by a design she saw in Abrahams' African Folk Tales book (such an awesome book!), so I went to see if I could find it, and I think it must be this one:

I'm so glad when there is an artist's note with detailed information like that. I never would have been able to guess her inspiration, but now I can see it clearly!

You might recall that we a read a lovely book by Ann Grifalconi last year: The Village of Round and Square Houses. This is a book that she both wrote and illustrated, and you can see that it uses a quite different style:

That sticker on the cover is the Caldecott Medal! Grifalconi's book was recognized as "the most distinguished American picture book for children" in 2010. So, if you didn't get a chance to read that book with us back in June, take a few moments to read it now. It's a great story, and beautifully illustrated.

To finish up this week's post, I wanted to add some more Anansi stories from James Berry! This is actually one of my favorite Anansi books: Spiderman Anancy.

This book has 20 stories, told in Berry's absolutely wonderful style! The illustrations are by British-Nigerian artist Joseph Olubo:

Berry also published this Anansi children's book: First Palm Trees: An Anancy Spiderman Story.

This book has color illustrations by Greg Couch:

Berry is best known as a poet, and you can find many of Berry's other books at the Internet Archive too, including this book of children's poetry: A Nest Full of Stars..... which has illustrations by the late, great Ashley Bryan! 

So of course I wanted to include that also: Berry AND Bryan! Fans of Ashley Bryan will recognize his style right away:

So, I hope you enjoyed this week's story, and maybe you will want to explore more from James Berry and Ann Grifalconi too! And Ashley Bryan!

Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird

by James Berry

Tricksters: Ananse the Spider

After a week of rabbit tricksters, I thought it was about time we do some spider stories, so I'll start off 2023 with a week of Anansi books. First up: Ananse the Spider: Tales from an Ashanti Village by Peggy Appiah (and, yes, she is the mother of Kwame Appiah).

The illustrations are by Peggy Wilson. I haven't been able to find out anything more about her, but I really like this design style; here are two of the full-page illustrations:

There are 13 excellent Ananse (Anansi) stories in this book, so if you are looking to learn more about the most famous of the west African tricksters, this book is a great option.

You might remember Peggy Appiah from an earlier blog post, when I wrote about her wonderful book Tales of an Ashanti Father. As you can see from the cover, there are also Anansi stories here too.

So, whichever of the two books you choose, enjoy Anansi's adventures!

Ananse the Spider:

Tales from an Ashanti Village

by Peggy Appiah