Anansi... The ORIGINAL Spider Man!
Thu, Mar 17
|NELA Delta African American Heritage Mus
Time & Location
Mar 17, 2022, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
NELA Delta African American Heritage Mus, 1051 Chennault Park Dr, Monroe, LA 71203, USA
About the event
"A story, a story! Let it come; let it go." (Traditional saying of storytellers in West Africa for the stories of Anansi the Spider.)
Anansi stories began in Ghana hundreds of years ago. They spread by oral tradition when Africans were brought as slaves to the Americas and the Caribbean in the early 1500's. Anansi was a very smart but mischievous (troublesome) god who was changed into a spider by the Sky God Nyame for not giving up his mischievous ways.
There are hundreds of Anansi stories in which the spider tricks a friend/neighbor or is tricked by the same. Anansi, a spider "so small, so small" always wins out over a larger, more dangerous opponent. This underdog persistence is what made African-Americans find value in the Anansi stories.
The character of Anansi has appeared in many novels, including American Gods and The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. These novels…