Reading Diary: Week 6: West African Folktales

West African Folktales, by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair

I chose the West African Folktales because they tell the stories of Anansi the spider, and when I was about eight or nine, I took an acting class, and our big production at the end was a tale about Anansi—and I was the spider! I don't remember much of the story, but I'm hoping the reading will jog my memory...

How Wisdom Became the Property of the Human Race: The beginning of this story, about a man who possesses all the wisdom and people come to him to get wisdom, reminds me of King Solomon of the Bible, the wisest man who ever lived, and how kings and queens traveled from all over to seek his counsel. I could write a story of the two men meeting, or how they are the same person, and the stories mixed into two different people...

Even the second paragraph, where Father Anansi (father of wisdom) takes back the wisdom he has given and stores it in a pot, reminds me of Proverbs, where wisdom is frequently spoken of as if it were a physical thing, or even a woman. Maybe I could write a story about how the wisdom he collected and sealed in a pot became the woman wisdom spoken of in Proverbs...

At the end, as Anansi is climbing a tree to store his wisdom out of reach, he realizes he can't because the pot is swinging in front of him. So his son calls from below, "Why don't you put the pot on your back?" and he realizes he doesn't have all the wisdom. I like the idea of the wisdom coming from a child; so simple and innocent, not polluted by bitterness or selfishness, and because of this, he is able to see more clearly.

 

(Trying to hide the wisdom...)

Anansi and Nothing: Here, Anansi borrows a rich man's clothes to get wives, and the rich man is left in rags, and so he gets a poorer wife whose Anasi's wives laugh at. But when they return home, the rich man's wife has all she needs, and Anansi's wives have nothing. I like the idea of using this theme—how it may appear that a person has nothing, or they really do have nothing at the time—but it's only because they're wise and saving for the future, or they simply don't boast about what they have.