Trickster Tales - Page 2
© Meg Greene Malvasi
Not only did the trickster tales offer slaves consolation and hope, they also kept alive the African tradition of storytelling. Although many of these stories fell into obscurity during the twentieth century, since the 1960s and 1970s there has been a renewed interest in the trickster tales and in African and African-American folktales in general. More than entertaining stories, the trickster tales were another potent weapon in the slaves' arsenal that enabled them subtly to challenge the master's power and to reject the master's image of them as weak, docile, and stupid. Spun out of everyday experience and containing familiar images and characters that even children could recognize and understand, the trickster tales showed that the poor, oppressed, downtrodden, and weak had within themselves the power to overcome those who exploited and abused them. These stories thus served as a form of protest against the practice of slavery, while offering strength and hope to African American slaves throughout the South.
Check Out At Your Library: A Ring Of Tricksters: Animal Tales From America, the West Indies, and Africa by Virginia Hamilton (Grade 4+), With A Whoop And A Holler, by Nancy Van Laan (Grade 4+), William Faulkner's The Days When Animals Talked Back: Black American Folktales and How They Came To Be, (Grade 3+), and Jump!: the Adventures of Brer Rabbit, by Malcolm Jones (Grade 3+).
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The copyright of the article Trickster Tales - Page 2 in History For Children is owned by Meg Greene Malvasi. Permission to republish Trickster Tales - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
