A TREASURY OF AFRO-AMERICAN FOLKLORE

by Harold Courlander ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 23, 1976

Following A Treasury of African Folklore (1975), this is a similar patchwork of materials from--the book's chief distinction--the Caribbean and parts of South America as well as the United States. Where stories, songs or sayings were collected, they are represented; some are early, some relatively late. Eyewitness reports of customs and traditions are also excerpted irrespective of date. Usually (though not invariably) there is a brief introduction, but it is frequently confined to a listing of sources and forms. One has no sense of selection, organization or emphasis, and interpretation of any kind is minimal. Even at its strongest, in the Caribbean section, the book is deficient. A historical panorama of Haitian political songs stops cold before a single ditty about Haiti's omnipresident Francois Duvalier--possibly because Courlander's source is a 1960 collection of his own and Duvalier did not take office until 1957. Similarly, he presents extensive excerpts from George Gaylord Simpson's 1955 description of the Ras Tafari movement in Jamaica without explaining how it subsequently changed. The U.S. selection lacks the attraction of novelty and is even more critically out of date. Courlander fails to recognize Brer Rabbit as the wily slave; he discounts the idea that the majority of spirituals had a disguised meaning; and he prints nothing dearly identifiable as a protest story, whether from the Sixties or before. The explanation may be that his American sources include nothing but a few works of his own published since pre-revolutionary 1958.

Pub Date: March 23, 1976

ISBN: 1569245010

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1976

Categories: NONFICTION