Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Reading Notes: Nigerian Folk Stories, Part B

· Could I do something other than thunder and lightning? What about rain and a rainbow, or something cheesy like that?

· I love the small details. “[H]e caught and ate a spider.” In fact, I loved all the details about the monkey. He seems like a delightful, distractible fellow, and I would enjoy seeming more of him. What if I were to write a story about him, and mischief he gets into?

· I feel like the solution to this wasn’t to say that no one could have a tame animal, but whatever.

· What if the mother moderated between the brothers, so that when they were about to fight each other she made them talk it out first, and bloodshed was avoided?

· There’s the one where the tortoise figures out the hippo’s name. I want to somehow mix that with the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Could I meld the two? I could have something where the hippo does the tortoise a favor, but requires his firstborn unless he guesses his name, or something along those lines…

· I don’t really like the story about the dog and the sheep. It’s too sad.

· Ugh that’s horrible. What if when a man behaves badly as a husband he gets thrown into slavery and she gets a new husband? I wish there had been grace. Actually, what I really wish is that he had stuck to one wife. I wonder how I could rework this…

· There are a lot of fat women in these tales.

· Wow, I’m so sad about the old woman.

· I don’t know if I think the tortoise cheated or not. He didn’t tell the whole tale, certainly.

· I could tell a story that revolves around the custom of killing twins. Maybe, there could be a Romulus and Remus type situation happening.

· I don’t like the stories that pit friends against each other.


Bibliography:  Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, by Elphinstone Dayrell.

No comments:

Post a Comment