Discussion for Why Monkeys Live in Trees and Other Stories from Benin

[Diane , Armchair Tour Guide]

Start discussion here for Why Monkeys Live in Trees and Other Stories from Benin by Raouf Mama

[rebel]

Alright, I just finished this and am going to post part of my review below.

I'm hesitant to give it a low rating, because these stories obviously meant enough to several ethnic groups in Benin to be handed down over generations, and who am I, as a white Western reader, to discount them? But Goodreads ratings are based on enjoyment of the book, and the honest truth is, I didn't enjoy it.

At first I thought this was because the tales were about animals and that just isn't really my thing. But then the tales moved on to stories about people, and I still didn't enjoy them. I began to wonder if there was a cultural divide preventing me from seeing what was valuable about these tales. And that may be true. The writing was, in my opinion, not good, but I'm willing to say that could just be a function of African storytelling being much different from European storytelling. The thing that makes me wonder about this conclusion, though, is that when poems or sayings are translated into English, they're translated into rhyming English. This is something that bothers me whenever I see it in translations--if something rhymed in the original language, the chances that it also rhymes in English are very small, and I wonder what we're losing from the original version to make it fit into rhyming English words.

...

Also, I'm starting to wonder if I just don't enjoy folk and fairy tales anymore. I recently watched the new live action Cinderella on the recommendation of a friend, and I was mostly bored (and simmering with feminist indignation) the whole time.

I'm curious to hear what the rest of the group thought of this read.

[Alana]

I just got around to reading this (had to get a copy through interlibrary loan) and I felt the opposite: I quite enjoyed it. It reminded me very much of Native American folk tales of the Coyote Trickster, and some of the stories were similar to various biblical parables, such as the Prodigal Son (although the endings were quite different). It's compelling to see how similar the origins of vastly different cultures really are, through their oral tradition.

The rhyming didn't bother me, as Mama in the introduction explains how he had to make small alterations to the stories to make the ideas translate into English, and he was probably trying to separate out the rhyming parts from other parts of the story, the way they would be in the true oral tradition. Chances are, these stories are never told exactly the same way, so each is a compilation of the overall idea of the story from several very similar backgrounds. What an interesting task to undertake!