The Tar Baby: A Global History by Bryan Wagner (review)

In Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus appeared as the prototype of the wise black storyteller and the humorous philosopher. Uncle Remus also offered new versions of the tar baby tale. Trickster figures such as a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of tar were at the heart of the different sources for Harris's selected lore. Bryan Wagner wonders if these animals are connected to the Roman de Renard, written seven hundred years before Uncle Remus. Did they belong "to the 'Master Thief ' story cycle transcribed by Herodotus" (8), as Elsie Clews Parsons's theory suggested? Could the whole tradition "concerned with speaking animals … only have come from Africa"? (4). In the first half of the twentieth century, "the tar baby story remained an important touchstone in the argument for African cultural survivals" (5). Theories related to the hazy diffusion of the story have evolved with time, but no one can say for certain when or where the tar baby stories originated.

Rather than primarily concentrating on the background of the Uncle Remus tales, Bryan Wagner explores a broader formula resulting from global trade and colonialism: a global context of interactions related to colonial and racial (but also racist) attitudes. Wagner's analysis offers a counterpoint to specialists who conceive the tar baby story as a remnant of African folklore. Wagner brilliantly leads us through the various origins of the tar baby story, beyond borderlines, thus opening a wide range of perspectives on the treasury of universal folklore. His illuminating and rich study of the tar baby traces the influence of African and African American traditions to explain its varieties throughout the world. He also demonstrates that the tar baby must be understood as a collective experiment, a point illustrated in chapter 1, and so he keys the story to a theory of cultural politics. Wagner's thematic approach extends the significance of the tar baby narrative structure in ethnic and racial terms. As he states, "The theory of cultural politics associated with this interpretation of the tar baby has remained influential, especially in interdisciplinary fields focused on race and ethnicity" (17).

The book is divided into five chapters structured to track and study the impact of globalization and the issue of identification at large in the tar baby stories, accompanied by a prologue, an epilogue, and an appendix containing twelve examples of tar baby tales. These examples from different parts of the world (South Africa, Corsica, the Georgia Low Country, Brazil, Bahamas, Philippines, California, Nigeria, Oaxaca, Cape Verde Islands, Colombia, Tanzania) illustrate the scope of the tar baby icon and further highlight the global interpretation the author compellingly demonstrates throughout his study, although this list would have been even more useful if it had supplied a comprehensive comparison of common points and differences. An interpretation of these tales across borders and their links to humor, irony, and complicity within the group is missing and would have complemented the rest of the analysis.

Chapter 2 analyzes the issue of identification in the tar baby stories. The different stories, such as the story of the rabbit and the tar wolf (24–26), depict opposite characters (an industrious character and a lazy one) facing a dilemma linked to agriculture or commercial development. This contrast highlights the issue of appropriation, which is challenged by the trickster whose actions are the cause of the conflict. The stories also exemplify the struggle with circumstances, how social conventions were flaunted, and "draw other variables into consideration" (34). Chapter 3 shows how the stories overcome time and space and became part and parcel of the canon of world culture. Tar as object can be understood to symbolically represent labor and raw material, in contrast to technology. Chapter 4 details the tripartite narrative structure of the tar baby stories and their metaphorical approach to resistance and oppression. Wagner asserts that "like the enslaved captive in a war of retribution...