The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

Abstract

This book first appeared hardbound in 1985. The book has four sections. The first is made up of seven Bruh Rabbit tales, i.e., fables. The first is the great story of acquainting the arrogant lion king with man. He Lion is scaring all the little animals by roaring Me and Myself. Bruh Bear and Bruh Rabbit bring He Lion to three characters in their day's travel. Will Be and Once Was are, respectively, a boy and an old man. When they meet the third, a twenty-one year old with a gun, Bruh Bear and Bruh Rabbit take cover. He Lion, after taking a couple of shots from the man's gun, proclaims, with a softer voice, Me and Myself and Man. The second fable is a good version of Tar Baby. The third is Tappin, the Land Turtle. It is an aetiological tale about the turtle's back. Bruh Alligator and Bruh Deer is a story I have not known before. Alligator and Deer agree that in the future, Deer will bring beagles and other dogs chasing him to the river for Alligator to eat. But if he cannot provide dogs, Deer will have to watch out! Bruh Lizard and Bruh Rabbit has the former besting the latter. Rabbit steals Lizard's magic sword but does not know how to stop its work. Rabbit ends up appealing to Lizard to stop the sword, which has cut down everything of Rabbit's. Bruh Alligator Meets Trouble through the machinations of Rabbit. Alligator thinks that Trouble is a person, and Alligator wants to meet him. Rabbit sets fire to the field in which Alligator, his sister, and her children have fallen asleep. This was the day when alligators stopped having white skin! And now the alligators never venture too far from the river. They know trouble! Wolf and Birds and the Fish-Horse is a revenge story. Wolf loses all his friends and even steals from Mama Fish-Horse, a walrus. But she knows how to get revenge. A prize story is the first in the last section, consisting of freedom stories: Carrying the Running-Aways (141-6). Any reader of this book should not miss the title-story on 166-73. The stories are accompanied by large black-and-white illustrations. I do not find anything special going on in them. The single colored illustration spanning the covers is, well, uplifting.

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