“Nothing but Pleasant Memories of the Discipline of Slavery”The Trickster and the Dynamics of Racial Representation

The anarchic trickster spider Anansi, whose origins can be traced back to West Africa, is predominantly found in Anglophone Caribbean folktales, while Brer Rabbit, who originates from South, Central and East Africa, is popular across the French-speaking Caribbean and USA. Brer Rabbit tales entered white American mainstream culture in the late nineteenth century through Joel Chandler Harris’s “Uncle Remus” collections. Through scrutinizing representations of Anansi in late-nineteenth-century collections in Jamaica and Brer Rabbit tales collected during the same period in the American South, this essay compares the very different trajectories of the two trickster figures.