Analyses the relationships among the socio-historical contexts, generic forms, and rhetorical strategies of British West Indian slave narratives. Grounded by the syncretic theories of creolisation and testimonio it breaks new ground by reading these dictated and fragmentary narratives on their own terms as examples of 'creole testimony'.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

In this unusual collection of stories and fables, Goncourt prize-winner Patrick Chamoiseau re-creates in truly magical language the stories he heard as a child in Martinique....

This teeming compendium of tales assembles and classifies the abundant lore and storytelling prevalent in the French culture of southern Louisiana. This is the largest, most diverse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings—the Cajun French and its English translation—along with insightful commentaries. This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana through the years has remained vigorous and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of their best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales—all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best. Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It is even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.

Creole is a unique creature who lives alone in the swamp. She lives alone because the other creatures that live there are frightened by her looks. Looks can be deceiving and so can judging a book by its cover.

Focusing on slave narratives from the Atlantic world of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this interdisciplinary collection of essays suggests the importance—even the necessity—of looking beyond the iconic and ubiquitous works of Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs. In granting sustained critical attention to writers such as Briton Hammon, Omar Ibn Said, Juan Francisco Manzano, Nat Turner, and Venture Smith, among others, this book makes a crucial contribution not only to scholarship on the slave narrative but also to our understanding of early African American and Black Atlantic literature. The essays explore the social and cultural contexts, the aesthetic and rhetorical techniques, and the political and ideological features of these noncanonical texts. By concentrating on earlier slave narratives not only from the United States but from the Caribbean, South America, and Latin America as well, the volume highlights the inherent transnationality of the genre, illuminating its complex cultural origins and global circulation.

For hundreds of years in Louisiana, lullabies were hummed, prayers were called, opera was performed, la-las were danced, and work and carnival songs were sung in Creole. A francophone language with connections to West Africa, Louisiana Creole is now one of the most endangered languages in the world. In this musical ethnography, you will find fifteen original and traditional Creole songs that cross time and musical genres such as blues, zydeco, and traditional jazz. African spirits, maroon villages, Congo Square, southwest Louisiana dance halls, and the Northside Skull and Bone Gang all make appearances. Beginning with an introduction to the history and grammar of the language, the accompanying essays include in-depth interviews with Creole speakers and their descendants, as well as photography, original artwork, archival documents, and altars. The book concludes with the Creole lyrics for each song, along with their English translations. Avek ye, vou ve 'koute, lir, chante, epi pale an Creole. (With them, you will listen, read, sing, and speak in Creole.) Includes audio CD of Creole compositions from Louisiana.