New Book: The Annotated African American Folktales

The Annotated African American Folktales by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor) and‎ Maria Tatar (Editor) was released late last year but is timely to consider now for upcoming Black History Month in February. I always have a great affection for these stories since they tend to be predominantly from the Southern U.S., making them something I grew up with. Folklore is often a genre of empowerment for the powerless or less powerful peoples in history, be it powerlessness from age, gender, race, etc. This collection is an excellent reminder of the power of folklore. From the introductions to the annotations, there is a lot to be learned and appreciated within these pages while the tales themselves can be very entertaining.

Book description:

These nearly 150 African American folktales animate our past and reclaim a lost cultural legacy to redefine American literature.

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such classics as Arthur Huff Fauset’s “Negro Folk Tales from the South” (1927), Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935), and Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly (1985), acclaimed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar assemble a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that revitalizes a vibrant African American past to produce the most comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history. Arguing for the value of these deceptively simple stories as part of a sophisticated, complex, and heterogeneous cultural heritage, Gates and Tatar show how these remarkable stories deserve a place alongside the classic works of African American literature, and American literature more broadly.

Opening with two introductory essays and twenty seminal African tales as historical background, Gates and Tatar present nearly 150 African American stories, among them familiar Brer Rabbit classics, but also stories like “The Talking Skull” and “Witches Who Ride,” as well as out-of-print tales from the 1890s’ Southern Workman. Beginning with the figure of Anansi, the African trickster, master of improvisation―a spider who plots and weaves in scandalous ways―The Annotated African American Folktales then goes on to draw Caribbean and Creole tales into the orbit of the folkloric canon. It retrieves stories not seen since the Harlem Renaissance and brings back archival tales of “Negro folklore” that Booker T. Washington proclaimed had emanated from a “grapevine” that existed even before the American Revolution, stories brought over by slaves who had survived the Middle Passage. Furthermore, Gates and Tatar’s volume not only defines a new canon but reveals how these folktales were hijacked and misappropriated in previous incarnations, egregiously by Joel Chandler Harris, a Southern newspaperman, as well as by Walt Disney, who cannibalized and capitalized on Harris’s volumes by creating cartoon characters drawn from this African American lore.

Presenting these tales with illuminating annotations and hundreds of revelatory illustrations, The Annotated African American Folktales reminds us that stories not only move, entertain, and instruct but, more fundamentally, inspire and keep hope alive.

The Annotated African American Folktales includes:

• Introductory essays, nearly 150 African American stories, and 20 seminal African tales as historical background
• The familiar Brer Rabbit classics, as well as news-making vernacular tales from the 1890s’ Southern Workman
• An entire section of Caribbean and Latin American folktales that finally become incorporated into the canon
• Approximately 200 full-color, museum-quality images color throughout; 160 illustrations

Black History Month: More Folklore and Fairy Tales

I completely dropped the ball on Black History Month and sharing more titles. I know Black History Month itself is controversial these days, but I have no problem using it to find inspiration for sharing African American and African folktales and fairy tale collections. After all, I also have big plans for Women's History Month in March, so stay tuned.

Anyway, I made a Listmania list near the beginning of the month on Amazon: Black History Month: Folklore and Fairy Tales for easy reference of titles although I only managed to feature two of them this month. (It's been an even more insane month for me than usual away from this blog. I'm just happy I've managed to post every day despite everything!)

Here are five more titles culled from the list of particular interest to the armchair reader as well as scholars:


The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore: Three Volumes edited by Anand Prahlad

Here is Booklist's Starred Review for it:

Intended for "students, scholars, writers, and the general public," these volumes cover African American folk traditions in the Caribbean and North, South, and Latin America. The multidisciplinary nature of folklore studies is reflected in the list of 140 or so primarily academic contributors, whose areas of expertise include art, literature, anthropology, religion, and more. Editor Prahlad is a professor of English at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Some 700 alphabetically arranged entries, varying in length from around half a page to 10 pages, make fascinating reading on topics as diverse as samba, the Sea Islands, sermons, Tupac Shakur, Stagolee, and the steel pan drum. Entries cover "the most important narrative and nonnarrative genres and motifs, major scholars and works, representative artists, key groups, and critical historical and theoretical concepts." The "Guide to Related Topics" presented, along with an alphabetical list of entries, at the front of each volume groups entries under nearly 20 broad topics, among them "Groups, Places, Regions" ( Barbershop, The; Ghetto; Gullah; Rio de Janeiro); "Material Culture" ( Dreadlocks, Gris Gris, Quilting, Soul food); "Music" ( Big drum ceremony; Blake, Eubie; Delta blues; Rap); and "Religion, Spirituality, Belief" ( Ashanti; Islam, Nation of; Preacher tales; Testifying). There are entries for a number of countries, among them Brazil, Haiti, and Uruguay. Other than South, The, there is no specific entry for the U.S. Article text is accompanied by occasional black-and-white illustrations and by sidebars containing folklore excerpts. In addition to the further reading lists attached to each entry, the reader will find a selected bibliography arranged by topic in volume 3. Also in volume 3 are a state-by-state appendix of archives, folk-art programs, and other resources and an extremely detailed index.

The fact that more than 100 entries are devoted to scholars and collectors, among them Imamu Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and Melville Herkovits, supports a statement Prahlad makes in the introduction. The encyclopedia seeks "to provide a significant overview of the current study of African American folklore" rather than simply define genres and themes. This goal, plus some scholarly language, makes it most appropriate for students at the undergraduate level and up, although there's plenty of content that would draw high-schoolers as well. This "first comprehensive general reference work" on African American folklore is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.

Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston

Publishers Weekly Review:

Although Hurston is better known for her novels, particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God, she might have been prouder of her anthropological field work. In 1927, with the support of Franz Boas, the dean of American anthropologists, Hurston traveled the Deep South collecting stories from black laborers, farmers, craftsmen and idlers. These tales featured a cast of characters made famous in Joel Chandler Harris's bowdlerized Uncle Remus versions, including John (related, no doubt, to High John the Conqueror), Brer Fox and various slaves. But for Hurston these stories were more than entertainments; they represented a utopia created to offset the sometimes unbearable pressures of disenfranchisement: "Brer Fox, Brer Deer, Brer 'Gator, Brer Dawg, Brer Rabbit, Ole Massa and his wife were walking the earth like natural men way back in the days when God himself was on the ground and men could talk with him." Hurston's notes, which somehow got lost, were recently rediscovered in someone else's papers at the Smithsonian. Divided into 15 categories ("Woman Tales," "Neatest Trick Tales," etc.), the stories as she jotted them down range from mere jokes of a few paragraphs to three-page episodes. Many are set "in slavery time," with "massa" portrayed as an often-gulled, but always potentially punitive, presence. There are a variety of "how come" and trickster stories, written in dialect. Acting the part of the good anthropologist, Hurston is scrupulously impersonal, and, as a result, the tales bear few traces of her inimitable voice, unlike Tell My Horse, her classic study of Haitian voodoo. Though this may limit the book's appeal among general readers, it is a boon for Hurston scholars and may, as Kaplan says in her introduction, establish Hurston's importance as an African-American folklorist.

The Girl Who Married a Lion: and Other Tales from Africa by Alexander McCall Smith

Publishers Weekly Review:

Straying from the safety net of a bestselling series (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, etc.), Smith tells 40 traditional African folk tales with his by now signature humor, simplicity and reverence for African culture. With an introductory letter from No. 1 Lady Detective Mma Ramotswe as a preface, he sets the literary stage for a nostalgic stroll down his own personal memory lane. Born and raised in what is now Zimbabwe, Smith began collecting these stories as a child and combines them with several he gleaned from a friend who interviewed natives of Botswana. Many of the stories parallel classic Western tales, from Aesop to Mother Goose. The ubiquitous wolf-in-sheep's-clothing fable becomes a parable about a girl who unwittingly marries a lion. Other stories deal with familiar themes ranging from ingratitude (in "Head Tree," a man cured of a tree growing out of his head does not pay the charm woman her due) to vanity (in "Greater Than Lion," a hare outwits a conceited and boastful lion). However, many are uniquely African, such as the stories that explain why the elephant and hyena live far from people or how baboons became so lazy. These are pithy, engaging tales, as habit-forming as peanuts.

Favorite African Folktales by Nelson Mandela

Publisher's description:

The vibrant tradition of African folktales—an oral heritage that predates Ovid and Aesop—is long and varied, but to date it has been largely overlooked in the West. Aware of this gap, Nelson Mandela selected thirty-two stories, many of them translated from their original tongues, to show the seminal role of African folklore in world literature. We meet tricksters from Zulu folklore; we hear the voices of the scheming hyena and learn from a Khoi fable how animals acquired their tails and horns. These fables present a veritable bible of stories "universal in their portrayal of humanity, beasts and the mystical."

African Genesis: Folk Tales and Myths of Africa by Leo Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox

Recorded in the early 20th century by an eminent anthropologist, these entertaining tales reflect the geographic and cultural backgrounds of their narrators. They range from Kabyl creation legends of the Berbers to ballads of the southern Sahara and the humorously exaggerated Improbable Tales from Sudan. Enhanced by illustrations adapted from prehistoric rock paintings, and by portraits of 20th-century Africans, this volume is of immense value to students of African culture as well as readers of folklore and mythology.

Black History Month: African Folktales

Continuing Black History Month with African Folktales by Roger D. Abrahams, another Pantheon title that is a wonderful companion to the book I featured yesterday, African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) by Roger D. Abrahams.

Product Description:

Nearly 100 stories from over 40 tribe-related myths of creation, tales of epic deeds, ghost stories and tales set in both the animal and human realms.

From Library Journal:

This volume sports a hefty 95 stories gleaned from the notes of the earliest missionaries on up to recent anthropological studies. Abrahams admits that reading the stories lacks the full impact of hearing them told aloud but contends that they can nonetheless still be enjoyed. The stories feature numerous illustrations.

Of course, with such a large continent, any book like this can only be considered a most basic overview. It is rare to find collections of folklore from specific African countries available in English so overviews are often the only resources available to casual and even somewhat enthusiastic readers. Still, this is one of the best of those available, especially for the price.

My specialty does not cover African folklore and fairy tales, but I have learned more in recent years with my research. There are also many titles available from the Golden Age of folklore studies, now available as scanned sources on Google Books or reprinted by enterprising small presses trying to preserve older books. I formatted three of them and published them on the SurLaLune main site, too. See them on the SurLaLune ebooks page. One especially is controversial since it uses the term Kaffir which has gained momentum as a derogatory term in modern times. I've received a few emails complaining about its appearance on SurLaLune where it appears as part of the historical record of folklore, not to represent or promote a mindset.

Golden Age of Folklore is my term, by the way, and for me covers most of the 1800s though about 1920, from Grimms to Jacobs and Lang with everyone in between. Some of it coincides with the Golden Age of Illustration. Just as so much European folklore is closely related, so is much of African folklore. Many tribes and cultural groups have similar stories. It is always interesting to see how some of these tales relate to European tales, they sometimes fit, but almost always on the slant.

This title by Abrahams is a better resource for comparison efforts since it is under the Pantheon imprint and thus follows somewhat of a series format.

Black History Month: African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World

In honor of Black History Month, I will share some great collections of African American and African folklore throughout the month. Today, I am featuring African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) by Roger Abrahams.

Product Description from the publisher:

From the canefields of the ante-bellum South, the villages of the Caribbean islands, and the streets of contemporary inner cities, here are more than one hundred tales from an "incredibly rich and affirmative storytelling tradition" (Choice).

Full of life, wisdom, and humor, these tales range from the earthy comedy of tricksters to stories explaining how the world was created and got to be the way it is, to moral fables that tell of encounters between masters and slaves. They includes stories set down in travelers' reports and plantation journals from the early nineteenth century, tales gathered by collectors such as Joel Chandler Harris and Zora Neale Hurston, and narratives tape-recorded by Roger Abrahams himself during extensive expeditions throughout the American South and the Caribbean.

From the Back Cover

"Earthy and comedic...a rousing good read.... I suspect Mr. Abraham's book will be read a generation hence."
--New York Times Book Review

"Another masterful addition and accessible introduction to the captured myths of what the Mede calls 'God's Chiefdom'.... Sweeping across the continent...the juxtaposition of tribes and pacing of story lengths make for lively reading."
--Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Roger D. Abrahams is a former president of the American Folklore Society. Among his most recent books are African Folktales (also availabe in Pantheon paperback), After Africa (with John Szwed), and Singing the Master.

Abrahams is one of the pioneers of African American folklore scholarship in the past 30 years. This title was originally released in 1985 as Afro-American Folktales but was re-released in 1999 with the current title. Be aware that this, as well as many other Pantheon titles, are intended more for adult audiences than young children. The violence and some other issues although not graphic will merit discussion and are not unique to this ethnic group, but appear throughout folklore. (I include this warning after reading a negative reader review on the Amazon page.)