OBJECTIVES
After students are told the African and African American versions of the same story, students will identify and compare the voice of the teller, their intended audience, as well as their intent. Since one of the stories has been adapted to meet the needs of African Americans during the period of slavery, students and teacher will both have an opportunity to assess their prior knowledge on this topic.
NOTES
The two folktales suggested below are good examples of how stories change and evolve, depending on the person doing the telling. The way in which the teller responds to different environments, and circumstances will affect their perspective and the story will be changed accordingly. We can see that that the needs and intentions of the teller of “Talk” and that of “The Talkin’ Cooter” are each unique from the other.
‘Talk’, as told within the African oral tradition, function as a means of teaching youngsters behavior decorum within the community. Adults might also use it among themselves as a sour e of entertainment or to illustrate and emphasize a point. “The Talkin’ Cooter”, on the other hand, would have been shared among the slaves to sustain their dreams of freedom. By celebrating Jim’s success they bolstered their own hopes to one day be free and warded off the despondence and bitterness that threatened to conquer their spirit.
“The Talkin’ Cooter”, like many African American tales of this period, is a dreamer’s tale. It served as a wish-fulfilling fantasy where the lowly slave, in this case the least empowered of all, being but a child, challenges the master and won. In actuality slaves rarely had any bargaining power and were almost never given their freedom.