Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 176 pages
- Published by: Ohio University Press
- Edition: 1st Edition January 18, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0896802566
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0896802568
-
Book Dimensions:
8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
- Weighs: 8 ounces
Product Description
The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba offers readers a selection of folktales infused with riddles, proverbs, songs, myths, and legends, using various narrative techniques that capture the vibrancy of Beba oral traditions. Makuchi retells the stories that she heard at home when she was growing up in her native
Cameroon.
The collection of thirty-three folktales of the Beba showcases a wide variety of stories that capture the richness and complexities of an agrarian society’s oral literature and traditions. Revenge, greed, and deception are among the themes that frame the story lines in both new and familiar ways. In the title story, a poor man finds himself elevated to king. The condition for his continued success is that he not open the sacred door. This tale of temptation, similar to the story of Pandora’s box, concludes with the question, “What would you have done?”
Makuchi relates the stories her mother told her so that readers can make connections
between African and North American oral narrative traditions. These tales reinforce the commonalities of our human experiences without discounting our differences.
About The Author
Makuchi is a professor of English at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Her publications include a book of short fiction,
Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon, and
Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference.
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