Tag Archives: Trickster

Kwaku Anansi, the Ghanian trickster god

Nationality: Ghanian-Nigerian
Age: 20
Occupation: Freelance color designer
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

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.

“Depending on the Traffic” – Folk saying

Pulled from audio recording:

“Informant:
Oh, and another thing—this might not count as a proverb, but in California, people always say “depending on the traffic.” If something is 20 minutes away, you’d say, “20 minutes… depending on the traffic,” because it could be 50 minutes or even an hour.

Pearson:
That’s so interesting. That’s definitely not a thing in Connecticut. Traffic was never bad enough to add more than 10 minutes to a trip. Rush hour was the only time it got rough. But otherwise, it wasn’t a big deal. The idea that a drive could be 20 minutes or an hour was super foreign to me.

Informant:
Yeah, exactly. Like, I live 10 minutes from Malibu, but I’m an hour from school. At night, it’s a 45-minute drive. But if I leave during the day, it could take an hour and a half—just depending on the traffic.“

Analysis:

To me I think this is really interesting because it goes deeper than it’s actual meaning. Personally, I never really hear people say this for a couple of reasons. Where I’m from traffic isn’t really a huge thing unlike here where everything really “depends on the traffic” literally and figuratively. Like I said I think it also has a deeper meaning. I see it more as a saying like a proverb but not quite a proverb. I would classify it as folk saying that’s used to convey the idea of having things take longer than they maybe should because of various roadblocks.

Age: 20

Date of performance: Told to me on February 13th, 2025. Something they’ve heard all their life

Language: English

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student at USC

Primary Language: English

Residence: From California, lives somewhere in the Los Angeles area

My Mother

Age: 53

Occupation: Landscaper

Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: Spanish

Language: English

Story

EG: “Have you ever witnessed or been told of an unexplainable occurrence?”

RG: ” Let me think… hmmm. Oh yes, I do remember one. This one is about one of my uncles when he was a little boy, and it all happened back home in Guatemala… uh maybe around 12 years old…He was heading back home one night from working on one of the fields and then he saw his mom on an open field calling his name. But uh… the weird thing was that his mother had already passed away. But with the innocence of a child, he believed that his mother was really calling him, so, uhm, he followed her through this open field in the dark because she kept telling him that there was a cow or something like that. This is what my uncle remembers. When all this is happening, he uh… actually goes missing for about a day. Now… from my parents I was told that when they found my uncle he was by a huge rock, which was basically by, uh… a cliff. His mother said that if he moved, he would have fallen. The devastating thing is that when they found my uncle he was slouched, and he remained that way for the rest of his life. No one knows, including himself, what was done to him to cause him to stay that way. “

Informants Opinion

EG: “Do you think that it was his mother’s spirit calling him that night?”

RG: “Umm, not at all actually because I don’t think his mother would have hurt him or put him in danger in that way. Instead, I believe that it could have been La Llorona because she is known to also lead people to cliffs. It was a bad spirit that night, but luckily my uncle was still alive when they found him. But uhm I still wonder what was done to him that caused him to permanently stay slouched.”

Final Thoughts

I can agree with the informant that the spirit that night was not the boys’ mother and possibly La Llorona. She is commonly known to take children away when they are alone at night, but this time it just seemed like she tried to lead the boy to his death. Also, since it was late at night and dark the possibility of him encountering some kind of ghost was high. After hearing this story, I also wonder what happened to the boy after he lost remembrance during the interaction. This story also can teach people not to let their children out on their own at night, or just in general to avoid being out dark places alone.

Myth: Anansi Story from a Coworker

Context:

Informant S is a 25 year old graduate student in the film production department of USC SCA and is the collector’s coworker. S is from New Jersey, and their family is from the Virgin Islands. S has “heard various Anansi stories within [their] family. This one [they] remember partially reading it for a project [they] were doing in a class but it also was within the realm of the ones [they] heard growing up [they] just couldn’t fully remember it so [they] just found one.” The informant has studied folklore for their own personal interest in it and employed it in their own filmmaking.

Text:

Informant: “Anansi is essentially like an African diaspora. It’s a spider, like a trickster-spider, and it’s everywhere in the Caribbean, it’s in the whole diaspora. And there’s one Anansi story I sort of remember where he’s hungry and he wants dinner. So he keeps getting himself invited to, like, dinner parties and pretending there’s a bunch of people and then he steals the host’s dinner and just, like, leaves. I think he killed one of them at one point. But it’s all these different like creatures of the forest I think, there’s a fox, a wolf, and a crow I believe? And then eventually he keeps coming home, eating all the food he stole, and not bringing any back for his wife and kids. So, I think his wife rats him out and then there’s like a fake dinner party made to get him and he eats so much food he can’t move anymore. And then all the people he stole the food from capture him and basically tie him up and leave him tied against a tree. And then he eats the rope and escapes. That’s not… that’s the gist of it, I can remember.”

Collector: “Like that’s how it ends?”

Informant: “Something like that. They usually have kind of dark endings but the… essentially Anansi is supposed to teach you […] lessons about why not to trick people and be greedy and selfish and a bunch of stuff. […] Anansi itself is like a… almost universal… one of the few universal diasporic concepts. There’s a whole bunch of them, that’s just one I remember.”

Interpretation:

I was lucky enough to find an informant for this collection entry that was familiar with concepts of folklore itself. S mentioned that their interest in the African diaspora is rooted in their own personal background, connecting them to heritage or family as we’ve discussed in class. It seems like this kind of interest in cultural folklore is common among the children and grandchildren of immigrants in America. S’ story reminds me of the concept of “universal archetype” – though that theory has been disproved, I can see why some folklorists have considered it. The concept of a trickster god, while not archetypal, appears in a number of folklores – notably in Indigenous American folklore, according to Lévi-Strauss’ work in structuralism. Anansi, like Lévi-Strauss’ examples, acts on instincts that are pretty reminiscent of human flaws, and is connected with a specific type of animal – a spider. Though S believes the story is to teach people not to mess with trickster gods, I believe it has to do with human flaw such as greed and gluttony as well. What’s more, I think it’s interesting that the informant specifically mentioned what they believe the story is supposed to teach, and has a pretty clear understanding of this story as a myth.

Karakondula

Informant: The myth of the Karakondula started in the Eastern parts of Serbia. The myth is of a small ugly creature called the Karakondula. The creature would assault and attack men late at night after they came home from the bar. It would primarily seek out men late at night hop on their back and choke them, while also stealing their pocket money. It was a myth because the men from these eastern parts of Serbia were actually really drunk and trying to convince their wives as to why they were home so late. These men were passing out in the roads and coming home late late into the early morning.

Context: I had a short interview with my informant and his sister and they recounted the folklore that they learned from their serbian father. He would tell them these stories. Later in their life the Karakondula became a sort of inside joke with their father.

Analysis: This gave me some more insight not only into my friend’s relationship with his sister and his father but also a bit into the folklore of Serbian culture. The karakondula is a trickster just like many others in folklore all around the world. It was a story completely made up by men to try and trick people so their bad behaviors go unnoticed. In reality these men might actually be the real tricksters here.