These beautiful and timeless stories from the African Bush were gathered more than a century ago and have touched thousands of readers ever since. The South African-born author, Sir Laurens van der Post, revered them and helped to make them known throughout the world. For this special new edition, Gregory McNamee has adapted the original nineteenth-century English translations to create modern versions of the stories for readers without a prior knowledge of the Bushman ways of life. The stories in this book carry universal observations and truths and, with their historical and ethnographic roots in the African Bushman culture, they are fascinating and educational for readers and listeners of all ages. They bear powerful testimony to a desert people living at one with Nature.

Once upon a time, an Apache story tells us, the trickster called Coyote killed a bear so that he could make a suitable quiver for his magical arrows. You shouldn't have done that, someone warned Coyote. That skin will only bring you bad luck. And so it has been for Coyote ever since, chased by bears and humans alike. In this charming collection of folktales from long ago, we read of the creation of the world, of the ways of animals, of the beguiling Coyote, of the world in which we live and other worlds that hide just beyond our sight. Drawn from the oral literatures of some twenty Southwestern American Indian peoples, these stories teach us about the constants of those dry places: about how the clouds form in the sky, how the heat rises from the ground, how the animals move about from one shady spot to another, and how the people once lived their lives. All these stories show us “ as the great anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, observed “ that folktales are not mere afterthoughts of literature, just pleasant stories to tell around the campfire, but rather valuable tools for reflection upon our own lives.

Learn how the deep history of nature became a dominant paradigm of historical thinking, through a study of landscapes of India. Winner of the BSHS Pickstone Prize by the British Society for the History of Science, Shortlisted for the Pfizer Award for an Outstanding Book in the History of Science by the History of Science Society In the nineteenth century, teams of men began digging the earth like never before. Sometimes this digging—often for sewage, transport, or minerals—revealed human remains. Other times, archaeological excavation of ancient cities unearthed prehistoric fossils, while excavations for irrigation canals revealed buried cities. Concurrently, geologists, ethnologists, archaeologists, and missionaries were also digging into ancient texts and genealogies and delving into the lives and bodies of indigenous populations, their myths, legends, and pasts. One pursuit was intertwined with another in this encounter with the earth and its inhabitants—past, present, and future. In Inscriptions of Nature, Pratik Chakrabarti argues that, in both the real and the metaphorical digging of the earth, the deep history of nature, landscape, and people became indelibly inscribed in the study and imagination of antiquity. The first book to situate deep history as an expression of political, economic, and cultural power, this volume shows that it is complicit in the European and colonial appropriation of global nature, commodities, temporalities, and myths. The book also provides a new interpretation of the relationship between nature and history. Arguing that the deep history of the earth became pervasive within historical imaginations of monuments, communities, and territories in the nineteenth century, Chakrabarti studies these processes in the Indian subcontinent, from the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga rivers to the Himalayas to the deep ravines and forests of central India. He also examines associated themes of Hindu antiquarianism, sacred geographies, and tribal aboriginality. Based on extensive archival research, the book provides insights into state formation, mining of natural resources, and the creation of national topographies. Driven by the geological imagination of India as well as its landscape, people, past, and destiny, Inscriptions of Nature reveals how human evolution, myths, aboriginality, and colonial state formation fundamentally defined Indian antiquity.

This volume builds on the momentum surrounding queer work within environmental education, while also encouraging new connections between environmental education research and the growing bodies of literature dedicated to queer deconstructions of categories such as “nature,” “environment,” and “animal.” The book is composed of submissions that engage with existing literature from queer ecology, queer theory, and various explorations of sexuality and gender within the context of human-animal-nature relationships. The book deepens and diversifies environmental education by providing new theoretical and methodological insights for scholarship and practice across a variety of educational contexts. Queer pedagogies provide important critical points of view for educators who seek broader goals centred around social and ecological justice by encouraging counter-hegemonic views of bodies, nature, and community. The scope of this book is multi- or interdisciplinary in order to cast a wide net around what kinds of spaces, relationships, and practices are considered educational, pedagogical, or curricular. The volume includes chapters that are conceptual, theoretical, and empirical.

The Bleek and Lloyd Collection consists of the notebooks in which William Bleek and Lucy Lloyd transcribed and translated the narratives, cultural information and personal histories told to them in the 1870s by a number of /Xam informants. It represents a rare and rich record of an indigenous language and culture that no longer exists, and has exerted a fascination for anthropologists and poets alike. Yet how does one begin reading texts that are at once so compromised and so unique? Bushman Letters is an important book for it examines not only the /Xam archive, but also the critical tradition that has grown up around it and the hermeneutic principles that inform that tradition. Wessels critiques these principles and offers alternative modes of reading. He shows the problems with the approaches employed by previous critics and, in the course of his own detailed and poetic readings of a number of narratives, suggests what their interpretations have left out. The book must be described as metacritical: it is criticism about the critical tradition that has grown up around the /Xam archive and in the fields of folklore and mythology more widely. Bushman Letters addresses a curiously neglected area in the burgeoning literature on the Bleek and Lloyd Collection: the texts themselves. In doing so, the book makes a substantial contribution to the study of oral narratives in general and to the theoretical discourse that informs such studies.

Herein are 51 illustrated African tales of Cunnie Rabbit, or Cunning Rabbit, Anansi the “Trickster” Spider and their mischievous antics they get up to with other animals in the West African Jungle. The 51 stories are divided into 13 sections. These sections are not the usual well-ordered and self explanatory sections you would expect. Instead, they are arranged with typically African fashion and meaning. They are: When The Night Has Come With The Spirits Of The Wood A Back-Yard Kitchen Evening On The Water A Purro Initiation The Burning Of The Farm Mammy Mamenah And Her Friends Children Of Nature An Afternoon In The Barreh Konah Turns Story-Teller While The Birds Did Not Come A Harvest Home In Temne-Land (Northen Sierra Leone) Konah Has A Wonderful Day Some of the stories interwoven into these sections are: Mr. Spider Wins A Wife, Goro, The Wonderful Wrestler, Mr. Turtle Makes A Riding-Horse Of Mr. Leopard, Cunning Rabbit And His Well, Mr. Chameleon Is Transformed Into A Boat, as well as many others which include your typical array of African forest animals like Mr. Crocodile, Mr ‘Elephan, Mr. Pawpawtámus (hippopotamus) and many more. But, Cunnie Rabbit is not in fact a rabbit in the true sense. Cunnie Rabbit is a small deer of the Duiker, or Dik Dik, variety of the family Cephalophinae of which there are 22 extant species. So, no matter what time of year it is, pour yourself a hot toddy, pull up a comfortable chair, and sit back and be prepared to be entertained with this old-fashioned book of African folklore gathered by Florence M. Cronise and Henry W. Ward from Sierra Leone over a hundred years ago. 10% of the publisher’s profit from the sale of this book will be donated to Charities.

Specimens of Bushman Folk-lore was published by Dr. W.H.I. Bleek only after he'd overcome many great difficulties (and great they were in late 1800s South Africa). So complete is this volume that Dr. Bleek even provides explanations on how to make the many click sounds that are endemic to the Bushman language. Good luck wrapping your tongue around them! This 260 page volume contains 84 stories about Bushman myths and legends, including interpretations of the natural world, animal fables, the story of the first man, and customs, superstitions, and more. There are stories about girls and frogs, hyenas that seek revenge, the wind, and the making of arrows. There are also stories about the origin of the stars Sirius and Canopus, the treatment of bones, prayers to the moon, and a man who mistakenly ordered his wife to cut off his ears. Of special interest is the story of one Bushman's first ride on the train from Mowbray to Cape Town, which describes his treatment at the hands of the local police and the imposition of the white man's laws upon him and his people. The old adage "Everything changes, everything stays the same," comes to mind. So curl up with this treasure of ancient Africa, this documentation of a changing world, and engross yourself in a culture that has no place for MP3 players, video games, or television. A percentage of every book sold will help fund the education of an underprivileged person in South Africa. SPECIAL NOTE: Rock art and archaeological evidence indicates that the San Bushmen once occupied countries as far north as Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, with some evidence of occupation in Kenya. Over time, environmental conditions and the negroid races pushed the Bushmen further and further south-today, they can now only be found in the countries of Southern Africa. Even now, the Bushmen's traditional way of life is further threatened by government regulations and policies that seek to restrict their nomadic tradition and "encourage" them to assume a more pastoral lifestyle.

Issues for 1965- include section: Annual bibliography of Commonwealth literature, 1964-

In this unique volume, you will find a collection of 25 illustrated folk tales and stories drawn from all four corners of Africa. Because each region has different cultures and customs, each story too, has it differences, some more distinct than others. Herein you will find stories like: The Elephant's Child The Story Of Mzilikazi Mophene, Leeba And Nkwe How Ingwe Got His Spots The Beast Of Prey, Eater Of People How The Kifaru Came By His Skin Why The Hare Has A Slit Nose The Heart Of A Monkey Anansi And The Lion The One-Handed Girl, and many more. 10% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities. ============== KEYWORDS/TAGS: folklore, fairy tales, fairytales, legends, myths, children’s stories, fables, bedtime stories, allegories, Fairies Story Hour, childrens books, pixies, pixy, witchdoctor, tokoloshe, , Africa, Anansi, Baboon, Baldy, Baviaan, beast, Bi-Coloured Rock Python, birds, bones, bucket, bush, cake, crumbs, cattle, country, creature, Crocodile, daddy, Darai, Daudawar-batso, donkey, dove, dwala, earth, Elephant, enter, Ethiopian, fish, forest, Furaira, gazelle, Giraffe, girl, golden, grandmother, hare, Hassebu, Hendrik, herdsman, heron, Highveld, Honey Badger, husband, hyena, Jackal, journey, King, kraal, lady, Leopard, Limpopo, Lion, liver, Lowveld, maiden, Man among Men, Master, Milky Way, mine, mistress, money, monkey, Moon, Motikatika, mouse, Mzilikazi, Nunda, nyamatsanes, ogre, Oom, Owl, palace, Parsi, Pestonjee, pumpkin, queen, rabbit, Ratel, Rhinoceros, River, satiable, Seeunkie, shark, sky, slaves, snake, soldiers, soul, Stars, straight, Sultan, sun, surprise, sword, tink tinky, truth, village, water, words, young, youth, Zebra, Ugogo,