Thursday, December 5, 2019

An African Storytelling Night at St. Olaf College

Yesterday evening, I made a presentation on African storytelling hosted by Karibu, a St. Olaf College student organization. I have done this a number of times over the years.

It is always a pleasure to share the story of the great significance of Africa in human history and civilization, and to illustrate this with evidence from folklore.

I demonstrated the wisdom and creativity of our African ancestors with several proverbs which we reflected upon. Then I told an Ethiopian tale, "The Donkey Who Sinned," from Harold C. Courlander's A Treasury of African Folklore, which made us think about the odious tradition of "might is right" and related social evils.

No comments: