The Founding Myths From Mother Africa And The African-American Diaspora-Professor Henry Louis Gates And Maria Tatar Hold Forth-“The Annotated African-American Folktales”

The Founding Myths From Mother Africa And The African-American Diaspora-Professor Henry Louis Gates And Maria Tatar  Hold Forth-“The Annotated African-American Folktales”    

By Jeffery Jones

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

[I am fairly new to working on this site although I got the full treatment concerning the internal dispute alluded to above about the short-comings which led to the demise of Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin) long time administrator. I will after some further reflection put my “two cents” worth in but for now the only comment I have is about the dearth of black writers here and subject matter except the heroic civil rights struggles from the 1960s. Strange, or maybe not so strange since Jackson (and the real Markin) had cut their eyeteeth supporting those struggles in the 1960s both in Boston and by heading down south. Jeff Jones]     

I think it was Joseph Campbell a man who spent something like a lifetime studying world-wide foundation myths, and if not him then somebody like him doing the same kind of research, who noted that all societies across all the civilizations since humankind started wondering, wondering about this place they found themselves and why have created foundation myths to keep them going in good times and bad. Added to that though were later myths, first passed down orally in cultures which did not have written languages or as the case here when African slaves were denied under penalty of death reading and writing skills, created to explain why things turned out as they did. How to survive in the dreaded diaspora when stolen away from Mother Africa where strangely, and to some incomprehensible if not downright scary, all subsequent civilizations emerged.  

All of this to point to a recent gigantic anthology of African-American both in Africa where a lot of the material originated and then got transmuted by the slavery experience mainly in the American south edited by Professor Henry Louis Gates out of Harvard University and folklorist Maria Tatar where they go root and branch to the cross-transmission from the old countries via the horrible Middle Passage to the plantation death knell. Along the way they have done a great service to line up, and not shabbily either, these myth-drawn folktales right alongside more universal myth tales from Christianity, from Greek days, and from ancient India and China times. Sustaining people hungry for some hope of salvation if not in this life then as Gates mentioned “fly away time.”          

To get a full hearing, an earful of not just what Professor Gates and Ms. Tatar have to say but how listeners responded to those foundational tales in their own lives when prompted by the show’s ideas I have linked up the NPR On Point  show where the pair held forth:

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/12/04/henry-louis-gates-folk-tales