Every thread, one shelf
The belief systems of the continent, told thread by thread — from creation stories to the traditions that crossed the Atlantic. Pick what you're curious about, or start at Origins and follow the sequence.
Jungian Archetypes and the African Mother: How Authority Forms
In more than one household I have sat in, an argument has ended the same way. Someone older, usually a woman, says one short sentence, and the room puts the fight down. Nobody voted.
The Negative Father Archetype in African Myth: Mwindo and Yennenga
Twelve days. That is how long it took a Nyanga bard named Shé-Kárisi Candi Rureke, in 1956, to get through the story of Mwindo — twelve days of chanting and narrating and acting out the parts, with an…
Àbíkú and Ọgbanje: Reading African Folklore in Contemporary Storytelling
The advice always arrives at the same moment. You have just finished The Famished Road, or Freshwater, or the chapter of Things Fall Apart where a stone comes out of the ground, and someone tells you…
Àbíkú and Ịgbanje: African Folklore in Contemporary Storytelling, and the Label That Almost Explained It Away
Okagbue Uyanwa digs beside the orange tree while the compound watches. Ezinma, nine years old, has led the men down toward the stream and back again, in no hurry, and then pointed at the ground.
Magical Realism, Abiku, and Ogbanje: African Folklore in Contemporary Storytelling
In most bookshops, Ben Okri's The Famished Road sits a shelf or two from One Hundred Years of Solitude, filed under the same two words: magical realism.
Not sure where to start?
Begin at Origins. Every other thread makes more sense once you know how each people says the world began.