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As one might deduce form its title, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom is of great interest for folklore scholars and historians. It is also important reading for those who teach ethnic literature. Oral tales from many ethnic communities now commonly appear in survey texts; however, though an integral and historically fundamental part of the narrative tradition in America, they are often overlooked in the teaching of American literature. This seems due, in part, to their structure, and to the fact that the tales can seem flat, simplistic, illogical, superstitious, or puzzling because the characters and plots cannot be wholly understood from within a Euramerican cultural framework.
For example, it has been common for someone without an understanding of the African animal trickster stories, and the social conditions in which these stories were told in America, to assume that such stories and their tellers revel in depictions of immorality and treachery--a view that can work to reinforce many of the most pernicious stereotypes about African Americans. It is Roberts's ability to address the importance of the African and American historical and cultural contexts, and thus reveal sophisticated narrative strategies and meanings in the trickster tales, which makes his book...