African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)

I agree with the previous reviewer - some of these tales are not suitable for children. But that can be said of many of the Grimm's fairy tales. Fairy tales and folktales are not for the faint of heart. They can be quite harsh - even gruesome.That said, this is a wonderful and scholarly collection of African-American tales. These tales have a different feel and cadence from the better known European tales. I love them for their novelty.The book is divided into different sections - if memory serves me - trickster tales, Carribean, Creole, and many, many more... Unfortunately I've lost my copy, I wish I could remember better. I am here now to replace it.

Overall... I loved the book... my grandfather told me a few of these stories... Rudy Ray Moore (RIP) introduced me to "The Signifying Monkey", " Stakolee" & "The Sinking f the Titanic".... the one toast that I thought should have been in this book is "Dolemite"... other than that... these were some nice stories...

Very interesting book. Great discussion book for our book club.

Great

I was quite underwhelmed by this book. I am a storyteller and gather stories from around the world to add to my repertoire and to inspire original stories. I found this collection of stories seriously lacking. Many of them had no apparent plot or theme. They seemed to be sentences just strung along together---that led nowhere. The writing didn't flow; many times I had to go back and reread a passage to see if I had missed something. I hadn't. Clearly, the editor was asleep at the wheel. If you're looking for good folktales, keep looking.

Roger Abrahams is one of the most famous of numerous European Descendants who claim to be writing folklore of African-Americans and Africans but were in reality only taking the most superficial basis and then filling it with their own stories, usually ones that portrayed African Descendants as lazy, violent, and ignorant. This is just the literary version of the rewriting and demeaning of African Diasporic history and culture; this is very important in Euro-American society where the consciousness must dehumanize the African Diasporic in order to validate the historical inhumanity of slavery.

I was very excited to find this book, as I have read other works by Roger Abrahams and absolutely loved them. Unfortunately, however, upon reading an excerpt of the book I discovered that one of the stories contained a tale in which a man, in his attemps to assert his superiority over a woman, repeatedly beats her. While I am not sure of what age bracket this book is meant for, the fact that that story was included, regardless of it folkoric accuracy, is very shocking. I'm very dissapointed.