See also Miscellaneous: Texts and Sources
A wealth ofproverbs from the Twi-speaking people of Ghana, collected by Rev. J. G.Christaller circa 1879 and translated for the first time into English byFr. Kofi Ron Lange, S.V.D.
[Studies inAfrican Literature No. 2] 0-88946-234-8 $99.95/£59.95 323pp. 1990Kolawole,Mary E. Modupe, An African View of Transatlantic Slavery and the Role of OralTestimony in Creating a New Legacy (in Tibbles, Anthony (ed.), TransatlanticSlavery: Against Human Dignity, HMSO, 1994)
108 Womenused oral as well as written poems, songs, folk-tales, proverbs, anecdotes,parables and fables to transpose African culture to the new world as well asrelive their African experience.
Owusu-Sarpong,Christiane (ed.) Trilingual Anthology of Akan Folktales, University of Scienceand Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, 1998 (Twi, English, French)
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 9:48 PM
Subject: Re: Query: African Literature for Schools
This is a field that needs fresh work, and I'm sure opinions will vary on the value of different collections. So here are my nominations:
A. One of the better general collections of folktales available is that of Paul Radin, African Folktales (the original version of this book included artwork, but the paperback just gives stories; the artwork connection would be worth pursuing).
B. Harold Courlander's _A Treasury of African Folklore_,issued in 1975 and reprinted recently offers a good sampling of traditions available in a variety of forms, concentrating on Anglophone sources.
C. M & F Herskovits, Dahomeyan Narrative (1958) is probably the best collection for a single group, although a number of the texts in the Oxford Library of African Literature would offer good competition (e.g. John Mbiti's Akamba Stories, Ruth Finnegan's Limba Stories and Story-Telling).
D. Besides the Roger Abrahams title cited, there's William Bascom's African Folktales in the New World (Indiana UP, 1992) for folklore in the diaspora.
Mythology is more of a problem, and there's room for new collections out there.
Most of the available epic material has been printed in French, but let me cite Oral Epics from Africa (Indiana UP) which John Johnson,Tom Hale, and I edited in the hopes of filling a need.
good reading,
stephen belcher
Titles added later:
Harold Scheub, *the African Storyteller*, Kendall Hunt 1990 (really intended as a classroom textbook)
Harold Scheub, *A Dictionary of African Mythology,* Oxford University Press 2000. The format of this material is sometimes awkward (one has to go through indexes to identify stories from the same culture, as the stories are listed alphabetically by main character or original published title), but this is one of the more thorough treatments now available.