The People Could Fly

I have not had a lot of experience with Black folk tales. To be honest, Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly was my first exposure to these tales. As I was reading them I was upset that I hadn't had more exposure to these kinds of tales. They are full of great lessons and stories: stories of trickery, honesty, life lessons and freedom. There is so much to be learned from these tales. They could easily be paired with Native American trickster tales, and I don't understand why these Black folk tales aren't regularly implemented into primary and secondary language arts classes.

It is exactly this type of literature that can be used to send a powerful message to students of color that their background and their heritage is valuable. By excluding them from the classroom, it's like saying that they have nothing to offer. These kinds of stories don't have to be saved for Black History Month, either. They can be used in a short story unit, a folk tale unit, a history class, an American literature class or unit and more. Students of any race, ethnicity, heritage, religious background, sexual orientation, and so on can connect with or learn something from these texts. They can compare them with tales they know, and discuss the similarities and differences. They can talk about how freedom is a universal desire. They can discover how magic and talking animals are symbols for deeper expressions.

Because this was my first experience with "Gullah" and other Black vernacular tales, I did have a bit of a difficult time understanding a few of them; I had to read them out loud to get the message. That being said, I thoroughly appreciated the blurbs at the end of the stories that gave a little history and context to them. It helped me to connect with them, it helped me to understand them, and overall it helped me to appreciate them more. I also enjoyed the chronology. I do not know if that was intentional, or if it just happened that way, but I liked seeing the tales move from folky, mythic trickster-like "Gullah" tales to tales of freedom, all of which were incredibly powerful.