CI 5442: Folklore Response

The collection of folktales found within Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales were both surprising and familiar to me—a response that greatly intrigued me. While “Bruh Rabbit” and “Bruh Fox” were creations that were familiar to me through Disney World and animated cartoons, the remaining stories throughout her text were completely new to me, I had never laid eyes on them before, and yet, many of them I knew. How could this be so? What I learned by reading this collection of stories was just how interconnected the human race is and how similar we truly are.

The first story in the book, “He Lion, Bruh Bear, and Bruh Rabbit,” was the first to surprise me. In one of my other classes I was working with others on a presentation on how to use the postcolonial lens. The story we chose to build a lesson around was Stephan Crane’s short story “A Dark Brown Dog.” While the stories are very different, I was struck by the way in which they could be used to complement one another. Both illustrate the danger and power of men, particularly white men, in controlling those around them. I was very excited by this and we discussed it in our group. But the comparisons did not end there.

The animal stories reminded me of the many Native American stories and legends that I have encountered in various projects on Native American peoples and cultures over the years. The Trickster character is found throughout their stories and is common among many other cultures as well. I love the use of these stories to explain how certain, unexplainable things came to be—the alligator’s skin was my favorite! The stories under the section “The Beautiful Girl of the Moon Tower” could have been pulled straight from my collection of Grimm Brothers and Hans Christen Anderson fairy tales, especially “The Two Johns” which is almost exactly the same as the Grimm’s tale “The Little Farmer.” The stories within the next section are a combination of myth, medieval tales, and scary stories that resonate within me. It is the last section that was particularly moving and truly seemed to illustrate the uniqueness and similarity of human experience. These tales, because of their base in reality, were much more moving in their theme of freedom.

The connections I made between the stories collected by Hamilton and my own encounters with folklores of other cultures and time periods, I think serves to emphasize the connectedness found within the human experience. While every culture and every period has a unique identity and history that is important to maintain, remember, and respect, there are many things that are common among us all—the desire to explain the unexplainable; the use of stories to teach our children and families the dangers of the world; the desire to find happiness, freedom, and love; our fascination with magic and mystical beings; and the indomitable spirit of man. Hamilton’s stories bring all of this to the surface within a group of people and the timeless, universal themes found within these stories found connectivity through my own limited experience of the world.

While the stories kept my attention, what I found to be the most useful element of the text were the short segments after each story that provided background information and insight into the creation of each story. Not only did these pieces help explain the dialects, settings, and specific settings for each sections creation, they also provided analysis of the symbolism and meaning behind many of the characters and ideas within story. Hamilton’s ability to provide the different versions and histories of the stories helped me to understand more about the importance, significance, and formation of each tale. The stories in the last section that contained so much personal history for Hamilton and other descendants of former slaves were particularly poignant because of those solid connections between past and present. Hamilton’s ability to bring these texts together and ground them in reality makes this collection a significant piece of our world’s history and culture; a piece that will continue to entertain, enlighten, and educate the world for years to come.