User:FlareNight/African-American folktales

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African-American folktales are the storytelling and oral history of enslaved African Americans during the 1700s-1900s. These stories reveal life lessons, spiritual teachings, and cultural knowledge and wisdom for the African-American community which became part of their cultural heritage. Prevalent themes in African-American folktales include tricksters, life lessons, heartwarming tales, and slavery. African Americans created folktales that spoke about the hardships of slavery and told stories of folk spirits that were able to outwit their slaveholders and defeat their enemies. These folk stories gave hope to enslaved people that folk spirits would liberate them from slavery. One of these heroes that they looked up to was the charming High John the Conqueror, who was a cunning trickster against his slave masters. He often empowered newly freed slaves, saying that if they needed him, his spirit would be in a local root. Other common figures in African-American folktales include Anansi, Brer Rabbit, and Uncle Monday. Many folktales are unique to African-American culture, while others are influenced by African, European, and Native American tales. -Done

Trickery and trouble

Tricksters in folk stories are commonly amoral characters, both human and non-human animals, who 'succeed' based on deception and taking advantage of other's weaknesses. They tend to use their wits to resolve conflict and/or achieve their goals. Two examples of African-American tricksters are Brer Rabbit and Anansi.

Tricksters in African American folktales take a comedic approach and contain an underlying theme of inequality, compared to other folktales that label their tricksters as menaces. The National Humanities Center notes that trickster stories "contain serious commentary on the inequities of existence in a country where the promises of democracy were denied to a large portion of the citizenry, a pattern that becomes even clearer in the literary adaptations of trickster figures".

The folktales don't always contain an actual 'trickster' but a theme of trickery tactics. For example, Charles Chesnutt collected a series of stories titled The Conjure Woman (1899). One of the story trickster tactics is "how an enslaved man is spared being sent from one plantation to another by having his wife, who is a conjure woman, turn him into a tree...the trickery works until a local sawmill selects that particular tree to cut". In other tales the personified animals try to imitate the trickster, however, it usually backfires on them. An example of this can be seen in Crawling Into the Elephant's Belly, in which Yawarri, an anteater, follows Anansi, the trickster, and blackmails him to be brought to the elephants. Yawarri's family is starving, and he is upset at Anansi because of all the elephant meat he is eating that is the property of the king. After jumping the wall Anansi instructs Yawarri on how to get inside the elephant, telling him only to take a small piece of meat from the elephant so the king will not notice. However, since Yawarri is starving, he eats at the inside of the elephant until it is dead, and as the sun rises in the morning the king finds him in the belly of the beast and kills him.This shows how an ordinary citizen can get wrapped up in the scheme of a trickster. Other tales that also display this theme are "Why They Name the Stories for Anansi" and "A License to Steal", although there are many more.

During this period of slavery, "and for decades thereafter, trickster tales, with their subtly and indirection, were necessary because black peoples could not risk a direct attack on white society".

God and the Devil

African-American folktales show how the world was formed and the foundations of morality. Supernatural conflicts between God and the Devil are often the main focus of these tales, however, man versus man, and slave versus master are also popular disputes. There is typically a "negotiator" in these tales who is actively trying to persuade "the judge" to side with their position. However, if the judge, or God, does not like the outcome of the situation they will often invoke a countermeasure to bring order to the situation. In these tales, the God, or gods, are inherently good and do not invoke wrath upon the people, even if the subject veers off the path of righteousness. Additionally, there is often a transaction between God and man in these tales, one in which God is willing to help man, but only if the man is "offering sacrifices and performing rites and ceremonies in a manner acceptable to the god".

An example of one of these tales is Never Seen His Equal. The initial dialogue of this tale discusses how only man has seen his equal, but God has not. It then goes on to describe how the devil is in opposition to God and, in Genesis, manifests himself in the form of a serpent to trick Adam and Eve in the Garden. This tells the story of the fall of man through Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit when tempted by the serpent, and how women now have to have pain in childbirth and men have to put in hard work to survive.

Teaching Life Lessons.

One story used by generations for African children is the Tale of The Midnight Goat Thief which originated in Zimbabwe. The Midnight Goat Thief is a tale of misplaced trust. A hare betrays the trust of a loyal baboon, framing him for the death of a goat. After Baboon's friend Jackal hears about what happened to him, he tries to replicate what Hare did to Baboon to get revenge. However, hare outwits Jackal and figures out a way to counter his actions. Then as the sun rises Jackal is caught red-handed with the blood he was trying to frame Hare with! The moral of the story is to be loyal and honest, and not copy the ways of the cunning, as they may outwit you.

Slavery

Conjure Woman (1899)

Although many slaves during this time could not read or write they could recite folktales as a way to communicate information with each other. Giving each other vital information that would help them survive. In African-American tales, slavery often uses rhetoric that can seem uncommon to the modern era as the language passed down through generations deviates from the standard racial narrative. When having to face the reality of slavery, African-American folktales became a means to cope with the reality of the situation, and ultimately record their history of slavery in America. An example of a work that conveys the African-American slave experience in America is The Conjure Woman. This book of tales deals with racial identity and was written by the African-American author, Charles W. Chesnutt, from the perspective of a freed slave.

Chesnutt's tales represent the struggles freed slaves faced during the post-war era in the South. The author's tales provide a pensive perspective on the challenges of being left behind.

Chesnutt's language surrounding African-American folklore derived from the standards of the racial narrative of his era. By using vernacular language, Chesnutt was able to deviate from the racial norms and formulate a new, more valorized message of folk heroes. Chesnutt writes "on the other side" of standard racial narratives, effectively refuting them by evoking a different kind of "racial project" in his fictional work.”