and are linked to the origin of human beings and
language. Worldwide, for perhaps thousands of
years, humans have told and retold tales of trick-
sters. Both culture-hero and buffoon, the trickster
is usually comical and often randy or scatologi-
cal. Tricksters “cause laughter... as they profane
nearly every central belief, but at the same time
they focus attention precisely on the nature of
such beliefs” (Hynes and Doty, 2).
Out of the context of slavery in the New World
emerged ancient and new trickster figures and
syncretisms (blendings) of figures from more than
one culture. Myths of the West African “ur-trick-
ster” Eshu Elegbara have been “as influential in
West Africa and its New World diaspora as Greek
mythology has been in Europe” and European
America (Cosentino, 261). Slavery and freedom
produced retellings of familiar trickster tales as
well as new stories and categories of tales told in
response to the much harsher environment of the
colonial multicultural Americas.
In the United States, African-American trick-
ster stories began to be collected in the mid-19th
century. In her 1892 volume, A. M. H. Christensen
notes that she had published some Gullah trick-
ster tales before Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle
Remus stories began to appear in newspapers (x).
Harris is, however, the author known for having
popularized Brer Rabbit tales to a wide audience.
Both Christensen’s and Harris’s texts exemplify
how early European-American collectors failed
to capture the intellectual complexity and socio-
political contexts of the tales, though the origi-
nal storytellers had something to do with this.
In slavery, blacks did not intend whites to under-
stand all of the survival humor or the double en-
tendres that bespoke black intellectual autonomy
and critiqued whites; such was the case with the
Brer Rabbit category of tales that whites heard
and enjoyed. Developed and told in U.S. slavery
(and not collected until the 20th century), High
John the Conqueror trickster tales were even more
obviously cautionary and revolutionary; as such,
they were told exclusively in black community
circles. John Roberts traces the evolution of Af-
rican-American tricksters from the original West
African animal trickster figures and John tales in
slavery through to the “Badman” character in Af-
rican-American post–Civil War folklore.
For hundreds of years, trickster figures, tales,
and discourse strategies have helped those of Afri-
can descent in the Americas negotiate brutally de-
lineated cultural boundaries. The comic adaptive
and transformative qualities of trickster figures
and tales have proved attractive to 20th-century
postmodernist American ethnic writers generally.
As a cross-cultural mediation tool, comedy reaches
across boundaries to provoke participation in the
parallel ongoing processes of reconstructing his-
tory, recognizing U.S. cultural pluralism, and de-
manding social justice.
Toward these literary and social aims, trick-
sters and trickster discourse appear in works by
established and emerging African-American and
Caribbean authors. ISHMAEL REED’s parody of the
detective novel MUMBO JUMBO features detective
Papa LaBas, Louisiana Hoodoo’s refraction of the
West African Eshu/Legba figure. Set in the cross-
roads of the Caribbean, TONI MORRISON’s Tar Baby
is an obvious rearticulation of the best-known
Brer Rabbit tale. In Part Two of Morrison’s BE-
LOVED, Sixo’s argument that he stole and ate a pig
simply to improve the master’s “property” is a clas-
sic High John tale. In PAULE MARSHALL’s Praisesong
for the Widow, the protagonist is guided through a
ritual of spiritual rebirth by Lebert Joseph, a liter-
ary rearticulation of New World Voodoo’s divine
mediator, old Papa Legba.
Award-winning Caribbean-Canadian science
fiction writer NALO HOPKINSON employs multiple
tricksters. In her novel Midnight Robber, each citi-
zen is injected with nanomites at birth that develop
into a receiver linking the individual to “Granny
Nansi’s Web,” a data-gathering and -disseminating
system that protects, guides, and guards the peo-
ple. The Caribbean and U.S. Nanny/Nansi evolved
from the West African spider trickster, Anansi. The
young protagonist in Midnight Robber also has her
own personal Eshu as guardian, just as all adults
have their “personal Legba” in Old and New World
Voodoo traditions. Rearticulations of Eshu Eleg-
bara/Legba have appeared in European-Americantrickster 505