Remember the story about Anansi, and about Nyame, the Sky God who gave him all the stories of the world? I wrote last November about some students ideas of what, exactly, Nyame gave to Anansi when he passed on all those stories. There was talk of bubbles full of pictures, shelves of books, and white stuff like from the brain of Professor Slughorn (from Harry Potter), just to name a few.
Today I was at a local elementary school telling stories, and of course, couldn't resist asking the question again. What do you think Nyame actually gave Anansi? Here are a few ideas from today:
He told him all the stories, because he couldn't give them to him.
Books.
You can't do imagination - it's nothing, so I think he gave him books.
He told him t he stories and Anansi brought them down in his mind to his friends.
Nyame gave Anansi books from his house. I don't know what kind of house ... oh, I know! The library!
It's always fascinating to me, when I ask this question, to see who leans more toward the idea of books versus the idea of telling the stories or transferring knowledge of them from one mind to the next. It makes me wonder where these connections - this schema for stories - comes from. From print-centered literacy curriculum? From our print-based culture of communication? From different learning styles (aural, visual, etc)?
I think about what stories are all the time - I'm a storyteller, after all - but I'm still stuck with this challenge of offering such a concrete definition or picture of it. It's like asking me what air looks like. I breathe it everyday, it is so crucial to my very existence, and downright miraculous ... and yet, so elusive in the concreteness of our perception of the world.
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