If Di Pin Neva Ben

by Timothy Hagerty (Editor), Mary Parham (Editor)

This volume captures the essence of Belizean oral tradition, a wonderful mosaic of tales and legends which reflects the fascinating cultural diversity of Belize. These stories of supernatural occurrences, entertaining tricksters and mythical animals have roots that extend centuries back into Africa, the ancient Maya kingdom and Europe. In Belize they have now coalesced and evolved into a truly unique oral literature that testifies to the emergence of a national cultural identity.

Genres: Short Stories, Folklore

127 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of legends and tales. Funny to read Anansi speaking in Kriol!

[mwr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shocked to see that anazi crossed the atlantic. Fun stuff.

[Csenge]

The stories in this book have been collected in the 1970s, mostly by the two editors, in Spanish and Creole, and then translated to English. The volume has two parts: legends and folktales, grouped into smaller sections by topic. They mention in the Introduction that they considered grouping them by culture, but too many motifs reach across cultural groups to make that distinction. In the ten folktales included in the second part they left the dialogues in Creole, to show the flavor of the original language; once again, I had to read aloud to understand what was being said... Every story came with a source, as well as the place of collection, and the age of the storyteller.