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African American folktales : stories from Black traditions in the New World / selected and edited by Roger D. Abrahams.

Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Pantheon fairy tale & folklore libraryPublication details: New York : Pantheon Books, c1999.Description: xxii, 327 p. : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0375705392
  • 9780375705397
Other title:
  • African American folk tales
Uniform titles:
  • Afro-American folktales.
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 398.2/089/96073 21
LOC classification:
  • GR111.A47 A38 1999
Online resources:
Partial contents:
Getting things started: how the world got put together that way -- Minding someone else's business and sometimes making it your own -- Getting a comeuppance: how (and how not) to act stories -- How clever can you get? tales of trickery and its consequences -- The strong ones and the clever: contests and confrontations -- Getting around the old master (most of the time) -- In the end, nonsense.
Summary: From the cane-fields 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.
Item type: Book
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Originally published: Afro-American folktales. c1985.

"Sources, annotations, and index of tales": p. 307-320.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-324).

Getting things started: how the world got put together that way -- Minding someone else's business and sometimes making it your own -- Getting a comeuppance: how (and how not) to act stories -- How clever can you get? tales of trickery and its consequences -- The strong ones and the clever: contests and confrontations -- Getting around the old master (most of the time) -- In the end, nonsense.

From the cane-fields 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.

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