Anansi the Spider

Anansi the spider is the trickster folk hero West African slaves transported to the Caribbean. He symbolizes key aspects of Afro-Caribbean culture and is celebrated as a vital link with an African past. Anansi stories, in which the small spider turns the tables on his powerful enemies through cunning and trickery, are now told and published worldwide.

This highly original and innovative book traces Anansi's journey from West Africa to Jamaica, where he is celebrated as a national folk hero. The uniqueness of this book lies in its accumulation of new data on Anansi in both Ghana and Jamaica and in its theoretical analysis of Anansi's potential as a resource for resistance against oppression. As no sustained analysis of the Anansi tales has been undertaken with such ambition or on such a scale, this is an investigation dedicated to filling the current deficit in our understanding of this fascinating folk phenomenon.