Emily Zobel Marshall's Books

American Trickster

Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

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American Trickster

Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

Our fascination with the trickster figure, whose presence is global, stems from our desire to break free from the tightly regimented structures of our societies. Condemned to conform to laws and rules imposed by governments, communities, social groups and family bonds, we revel in the fantasy of the trickster whose energy and cunning knows no bounds and for whom nothing is sacred. One such trickster is Brer Rabbit, who was introduced to North America through the folktales of enslaved Africans. On the plantations, Brer Rabbit, like Anansi in the Caribbean, functioned as a resistance figure for the enslaved whose trickery was aimed at undermining and challenging the plantation regime. Yet as Brer Rabbit tales moved from the oral tradition to the printed page in the late nineteenth-century, the trickster was emptied of his potentially powerful symbolism by white American collectors, authors and folklorists in their attempt to create a nostalgic fantasy of the plantation past. American Trickster offers readers a unique insight into the cultural significance of the Brer Rabbit trickster figure, from his African roots and through to his influence on contemporary culture. Exploring the changing portrayals of the trickster figure through a wealth of cultural forms including folktales, advertising, fiction and films the book scrutinises the profound tensions between the perpetuation of damaging racial stereotypes and the need to keep African-American folk traditions alive. Emily Zobel Marshall argues that Brer Rabbit was eventually reclaimed by twentieth-century African-American novelists whose protagonists ‘trick’ their way out of limiting stereotypes, break down social and cultural boundaries and offer readers practical and psychological methods for challenging the traumatic legacies of slavery and racism.

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Page Count

183

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783481110

ISBN 13

9781783481118

Anansi's Journey

A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

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Anansi's Journey

A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

The historic Hope lands located on the Liguanea Plain in the southeastern parish of St Andrew, Jamaica, and once the site of one of the island?s earliest sugar estates, has had a long history of human settlements dating back to approximately 600 CE, the era of the indigenous Tainos. It was not until 1655, however, with the English invasion and seizure of Jamaica from the Spanish, that the Hope landscape developed into a thriving rural agrarian settlement. Generous land grants were made to the invading officers and later to immigrants from Britain and North America and from other Caribbean islands. Major Richard Hope came in possession of over 2,600 acres in the Liguanea Plain. Major Hope, unlike many of his counterparts by the 1660s, managed to establish a small sugar plantation, which developed by the mid-1700s into one of the island?s largest, most productive and technologically advanced slave sugar estates. In the 1770s the estate became the property of the Duke of Chandos and his family until 1848, when the estate was dismantled. Over 600 acres were sold to the Kingston and Liguanea Water Works Company and the remaining 1,700 acres were leased to the owner of the adjoining Papine and Mona estates. Poor accounting and border surveillance enabled several persons to possess the land, which was later sanctioned by the Limitations of Actions Law. With the government?s acquisition of the entire property in 1909, the Hope estate underwent remarkable changes in the twentieth century. By 1960 the Hope landscape was radically transformed from a sugar estate worked by hundreds of enslaved black people to a premiere urban centre of commercial, residential and educational land use.

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Page Count

215

Publisher

University of West Indies Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9766402612

ISBN 13

9789766402617

American Trickster

Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

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American Trickster

Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit

By: Emily Zobel Marshall

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

183

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783481110

ISBN 13

9781783481118

Book's by Emily Zobel Marshall

American Trickster

American Trickster

Anansi's Journey

Anansi's Journey

American Trickster

American Trickster

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