^^ That's one I had not heard of.
The sad thing about the one I mentioned is that the journalist who collected the actual genuine folktales (Joel Chandler Harris) was attempting to memorialize the stories (oral history? a la Studs Terkel) out of respect. Something like Alexander McCall Smith nowadays (with his series about the woman detectives set in Botswana).
I'm half cringing as I type this because things are so fraught currently that it seems all rapprochement is suspect, and people trying to memorialize bits of history and culture, to which they were not themselves born but which they loved, can be seen as opportunists or worse. (I think it's possible to love and wish to help preserve other cultures than one's own, I do devoutly. The key question now is *how*.)
Meanwhile, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah won an Academy Award...?! and I well remember Anansi stories, also authentic, being read to my class by my second grade teacher - without a trace of condescension or superiority. I loved them too, also in no condescending way. Maybe being Aspie I didn't pick up on undercurrents, and took things at face value as intrinsically respectworthy because they were other people's fairy tales, etc., and that was just so cool. And I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old at the time.
And at this point I have probably put my foot in it hugely without any awareness of doing so, so I will hush up and quietly go away.
_________________
"I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides."
-- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
18 Aug 2018, 12:24 pm
