Text: “Um, so like Kwaku Anansi is like this Ghanian trickster god. I think he’s like, in the form of a spider? There’s like books in my… what was it? My primary school? That were like simple little drawings of him vibing with the world. Nobody liked this guy. Absolutely nobody. Because he would steal, and pillage… is that a word? And he would steal… I wanna say gold. Because it was like the gold coast or whatever, in parenthesis ‘Ghana’, and so at the time, there might have been… I guess… I want to say like a gold rush of sorts? And he would just break into these peoples’ like… [pauses to laugh] properties and steal their gold or food or whatever? But yeah. What is a specific story…? Because I remember reading one about a field, and him being like, chased down by two guys… But I’m not super like… It’s very fuzzy, it was a long time ago.”

Context: Informant OB had a transnational childhood. Their father is Ghanian and their mother is Nigerian. OB was born in Pennsylvania, but they spent several years of their childhood living in Ghana when their father wanted to move there. Their family moved back to Pennsylvania when OB reached middle school. OB is also currently pursuing a career in animation and they were very skeptical of Kwaku Anansi’s recent adaptation as a Marvel character.

Analysis: It is not surprising that stories about Kwaku Anansi were taught to primary schoolchildren, as many trickster stories around the world are used to impart moral beliefs to children and demonstrate ‘what not to do.’ OB’s recounting of the source of their knowledge of Kwaku Anansi also indicates that the mythology was institutionally adopted for the purpose of pedagogy. As for the theft of gold, Ghana has been a major supplier of gold, ever since commercial mining began in the 19th century when Europeans set up mines. In recent years, Ghana has faced environmental disaster due to illegal gold mining.