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Research in African Literatures 31.3 (2000) 183-185



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Book Review

An Anthology of Myths, Legends, and Folktales from Cameroon


An Anthology of Myths, Legends, and Folktales from Cameroon, by Emmanuel Matateyou. Lewiston: Mellen, 1997. 256 pp. ISBN 0-7734-8517.

This anthology of myths, legends, and folktales from Cameroon is intended to introduce the reader to Cameroonian oral literature, presenting selections of oral narratives collected from oral performances throughout Cameroon. Matateyou has gathered in one volume sixty oral texts [End Page 183] translated into English, accompanied by the name of the collector, the performer (including his or her age and profession), the language in which the narrative was originally tape-recorded, and the place where the performance occurred. By including this information, Matateyou positions himself as translator and editor of this collection of tales, not as its author. Indeed he notes that many publications on African oral literature fail to give credit to the informant, thereby ignoring the oral performer's artistic contribution.

In his preface, Matateyou explains to his readers that this particular collection originated in 1979 when, as a student in the Department of African Literature in Yaoundé, he began collecting and analyzing several Bamun tales. The oral narrative project took more complete form beginning in 1990 when he began teaching at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Annexe in Bambili and, with the help of his students there, collected a corpus of three hundred Cameroonian tales. The tales chosen for the collection are divided into several sections: myths concerning the origin of things, tales about women, tales about men, and finally the trickster cycle.

In his introduction, Matateyou calls attention to the exceptional geographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of Cameroon, noting that within the four major geographical regions--Sahel, coast, savannah, forest--there are more than three hundred ethnic groups and more than two hundred national languages. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bafia of the savannah despise Tortoise, whereas the Duala and Batanga on the coast depict this character of oral tradition as the clever trickster. Similarly, the coastal people eat the tortoise and use its shell for decorative purposes, but the Bafia avoid all contact with the animal they consider responsible for having brought death into the world.

The critic also explains in the introduction that storytelling in Cameroon is not a professional activity, but that time, age, and experience transform an individual into a community storyteller. He finds, however, a significant gender division in oral narration: women and children tell animal stories that deal with human weaknesses; men narrate tales of heroes, gods, and powerful spirits. In her feminist critique of francophone African women's fiction, Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1994), Irène D'Almeida has commented upon this unequal gender division, cautioning her readers to examine African oral tradition and to be critically aware that it tends to exclude women from important genres, reserving prestigious forms for men. Acknowledging D'Almeida's critique, Matateyou observes that women are becoming increasingly involved in narrating the myths and legends that were once the exclusive realm of men. He notes, however, that the increased participation of women does not stem from growing feminist awareness in African societies but from the harsh reality that many men are spending their free time away from their family. Less involved in child rearing than in earlier times, they consequently become less instrumental in the transmission of oral tradition to the next generation.

Examining the section devoted to the tales of women, readers will find the negative stereotypes common to African oral tradition: the wicked and [End Page 184] jealous stepmother, the unfaithful wife, the disobedient young girl. Similarly, the negative traits of pride, jealousy, gluttony, unfaithfulness, and disobedience are severely punished. Clearly, Cameroonian oral tradition teaches young girls to respect their elders, young wives to obey their husbands. The reader will note that one orphan tale of this collection occurs twice, first as "Kwinchep, Bongabi, and Mabong" (88-90) and then as "Mbango and Her Step-Mother...

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