Br’er Rabbit descends from an African hare trickster carried across the Middle Passage
Evidence
The Hare matters especially because of where he went. When Africans were enslaved and carried to the Americas, they brought their tricksters with them. The West African spider became Br’er Rabbit’s cousin Anansi; and the East and Southern African HARE became, very directly, Br’er Rabbit himself — the clever rabbit-trickster of African-American tales. So Br’er Rabbit has TWO African ancestors woven together: Anansi the spider and the African Hare. The trickster of the American South is African memory, carried across the Middle Passage and kept alive in bondage. — , A Year of World Stories, 14780
Categorization
- SEED: An article tracing the documented lineage of a folklore character as covert resistance — how an oppressed people preserved identity through animal stories.
- XREF: Reinforces the reader’s kept claim that Br’er Rabbit is Anansi carried across the Atlantic.