An Evening of Storytelling at St. Olaf College

I have started this year with a spate of presentations in the community. This evening, following a request by Karibu, a St. Olaf College student organization, I made a presentation on story telling. The event was part of Africa Week, an annual program organized by Karibu to showcase and share knowledge about Africa.

As requested by Karibu, I emphasized the role and meaning of storytelling in African culture. I shared my admiration for oral cultures, constituted by individuals who are walking, dynamic encyclopaedias, so to speak. I invited the audience to contemplate the fact that these cultures, for the major part of human history, had to preserve and transmit all their knowledge without writing.

I engaged the audience in reflecting on proverbs and a Haitian folktale, "The Frog and the Well" published in Harold Courlander's A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore.