Blog 5: Following the Folklore
Akilah Q -
Hi everyone! welcome back to another update on my senior project, The Folks Are Talkin’. This week has been a productive one, and I’m starting to feel like the different pieces of my research are finally starting to come together in a meaningful way.
For my internship task, I focused on Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, a novel that blends family history, spiritual practice, and cultural memory in a really intentional way. I’ve been exploring academic articles that analyze how the book uses folklore as a framework for identity and resilience. It has given me a deeper understanding of how storytelling in literature can serve the same cultural function as oral tradition. The line between fiction and folklore is more flexible than I expected, and that flexibility is what makes Mama Day such a strong source for this kind of research.
At the same time, I’ve been looking into the figures at the heart of my project. Anansi, Papa Legba, and the Flying Africans each carry unique cultural significance, but what’s even more interesting is how their stories change depending on where they are told. I’m not just collecting tales. I’m paying attention to how these characters move between regions, how they are used to explain spiritual ideas, and how they are sometimes reshaped to reflect the needs of the communities that tell them.
All of this has helped me start thinking more clearly about the message I want to share in my final presentation. I want to go beyond just showing what folklore is. I want to show how it works — how it adapts, how it survives, and how it continues to influence culture today. I still have a lot of reading ahead of me, but I’m excited to keep going.
Thanks for keeping up with me. More soon!
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