Thursday, August 13, 2020

Topic Brainstorm: Myth-Folklore F20

 I've never tried doing both classes in one semester, but I think I'm up for that challenge this semester, and I really want to stay in touch with both classes from student perspective too... so, here are some ideas about a Myth-Folklore Storybook that I might do.

Anansi. This is such an obvious choice, and I really like the idea I came up with in the other brainstorming post about doing a microfiction COMBINED with a longer story on a single page, so I could find 3 or 4 interrelated Anansi stories, and tell one of them in some detail while letting the other ones just be microfiction to put the story in context of some Anansi pattern. I have so many great Anansi stories to choose from. The Adventures Of Anansi The Spider: a radio show!


Chain Tales. I keep coming across wonderful chain tales which I am including in the microfiction projects, but of course chain tales do not do well in 100 words, and the cumulative tales especially lose all of their charm. So I was thinking of going through the microfictions to look for chain tales and then telling them in a more fully expanded form for a Storybook. Especially if I am doing microfictions for the India Storybook, then a longer form project would make sense here. I would need to do some research looking for chain tales to use... like sparrow's revenge on the elephant, just to take one example. My old Chain Tales project:
 

Sufis. Another possibility is to do a Sufi Storybook! Since I will have the Sufi book of Tiny Tales coming out this semester, having a Storybook to go with that could be fun. And I could build it around personalities like Rabia and Ibrahim and Abu Said! Ibrahim and the angels:


Tricksters. This actually might be really excellent too: I am so interested in trickster figures, and I could pull out some trickster stories from Aesop, plus Anansi and Brer Rabbit, and maybe some Nasruddin stories that really show his trickster side... or some Coyote stories to collect now! Oh, now that I think about this one I think I like it the best! I think this is what I will do, and that would let me write a good introduction about tricksters in general. And I would love to put Anansi and Rabbit side by side. YES. I think this is what it will be. It will be so nice to write some Rabbit stories too; I missed Brer Rabbit this summer.

Rabbit and Turtle

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