Kenyan Folktales: Storytelling that is Alive

I don’t know about anybody else, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture we experienced on Tuesday. Dr. K’Olewe was friendly, engaging, and interactive, and it was clear he was passionate about his culture and the tales that rise out of that culture. He was able to tell nine different stories in a short amount of time and connect them to the points he was trying to make about the storytelling tradition in Kenya.

What Dr.K'Olewe said his favorite tale was

So what made these stories so entertaining? What set them apart from other tales?

I think part of the reason the stories were so entertaining is because I’d never heard them before. This makes them quite unlike the stories we’ve read in class, all of which I have encountered in some form or another, and some of which I am very familiar with. When I was reading these stories, I was pretty sure how they were going to end. Sometimes the ending differed from my expectation which was surprising and refreshing, but that occurred rarely. But because I’d never heard of the Kenyan stories before, I waited with anticipation to know how all of them ended. I had no idea what the ending was going to be or how the beginning and the end would tie together into a message. This factor combined with the heart the tales were told with made hearing them fun and captivating.

The Importance of Luck: An Analysis of the "Rags to Riches" Motif

The “rags to riches” motif remains one of the most popular story-lines there is. Not only are there several versions of Cinderella in the contemporary United States (I’m personally partial to Another Cinderella Story) there are countless Cinderellas from other times and places. There seems to be an endless demand for the adventures of people who miraculously rise out of poverty and inexplicably also find their true love in the process.

But how feasible are these tales? Could a “rise-tale” become reality? Although the perpetuation of these films in our society seems to suggest people gain love and riches inexplicably almost every day (art is supposed to mirror life, after all), a person actual ability to go from a “nobody to a somebody” is more complicated than “Cinderella” implies it is.

Innocent or Not, She's Still Gotta Be Beautiful

Once again, it is remarkable to me that stories that tonally seem so different at first glance can be the same tale at heart. While the literary adaptations certainly paint a different picture of the titular hero, Snow White, their tales do bear many similarities to both the music video “Sonne” by Rammstein and the classic Disney interpretation of the story.

In all versions of Snow White that we have seen so far, the societal expectation that women should be beautiful shines through. In every story, Snow White’s main attribute is her physical attractiveness. Despite having different countries of origin, all the tales (and films) describe her beauty in almost exactly the same way: pale skin, dark hair, and red lips.