Mythological Africans Podcast

While gay African men are subject to some of the vilest forms of homophobia on the continent, they have a long and complex history among African people. In this episode, we explore the ways male-to-male sexual desire has been (and in some cases continues to be) navigated in African societies. We encounter a wide range of attitudes towards gayness in traditional societies from open acceptance, thro...

When I was living in the mountains I got a special friend. She was living in another village, and I passed her house when I was going to church every month. One day she saw me and said, ‘What is your name?’ I told her I was ’M’atsepo Nthunya. So she said, ‘I always see you passing here. Today I want to talk to you. I want you to be my motsoalle .’ This is a name we have in Sesotho for a very speci...

Despite the abundance of information about the negative attitudes towards intersex Africans and the hardships they face as a result, details about the various cultural underpinnings of these negative attitudes are not well documented. Individual testimonies refer to beliefs in generational curses, witchcraft, demonic possession and more. The one research paper I found which analyzes Bambara (Mali)...

“We are a culture that knows about death, but we don't discuss it. We don't discuss sex either. With us, you can have sex as long as you don't let us know. There is a whole language for discussing sex, but it is very subtle - a child could be in the room and would never know that is what you are talking about. But a person who has AIDS, every time you look at this person you must confront sex and...

This episode introduces the topic of African Sexualities and Sexual Practices. I give an overview of the various culture-specific terms used to refer to concepts, practices, and people on the LBGTQIA spectrum in different African cultures. I also briefly touch on the subject of hetero-normative approaches to sexuality in communities. This is the first of a 5-part series which first aired on the MA...

This week’s episode focuses on African Divination, a topic I first looked into as part of a project about the cultures and customs of Cameroon, my country of birth. You can read a little bit of that work here . My initial research focused mainly on divination in the Cameroonian context. But Cameroon, as some of you may know, is sometimes called “Africa in Miniature”. This refers to the fact that t...

It is the White Bagre, it is Bagre Day: we begin to teach the children and the women and the men. We go in again to the long room. You see the food, you see the meat. It is beer we drink and make a din. The many matters to be performed in the room, we recited them and completed all. And now we turn again to take the food. We have eaten. Ancestors, you have eaten. Guardians, you have eaten. Deities...

"Gods, Ancestors, Guardians, Beings of the wild. The leather bottles say we should perform, because of the scorpions sting, because of suicide, aches in the belly, pains in the head. The elder brother slept badly. He took out some guinea corn and hurried along to the diviner who poured out his bag then said: let's grasp the stick.” (White Bagre, 1 - 20) It is hard to explain the Bagre Myth without...

We closed out October with an exploration of how African people have expressed their relationship with the natural world in word s. I figured for November, we should stay on theme by revisiting the Myth of the Bagre of the Dagaaba (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast). Ghanian poet, Dannabang Kuwabong, describes the Myth of the Bagre as a performance through which the Dagaaba articulate their search...

We go stargazing in part 2 of the Across African Skies Series . No topic I have investigated for Mythological Africans has delighted me more than African star folklore. It is sad, hilariously messy and deliciously intricate. Some tidbits: * In San (Botswana) folklore, stars are made each time a little child dies. * In Ndòwé (Equatorial Guinea) folklore, after a whole lot of relationship drama, the...

Welcome to Part 1 of the Across African Skies series which focuses on the mythology, folklore and symbolism of the sun and moon among different African peoples. In this episode, we examine the observations different African peoples have made of the skies above them, the meanings they attached to these observations, and how they have used this information to organize their lives here on Earth. Thes...

Modern Astronomy and Astrology are so dominated by European mythology, it's easy to forget that other people across the world also observed and forged relationships with the sun, the moon, the stars, and other celestial bodies. "Ukuta Yuva" i.e. To Praise the Sun is a Nyaturu (Tanzania) prayer which pays homage to the goodness of the Creator as perceived through the Sun (Yuva), the Moon (Mweri), a...

Hello friends! We’re back this week with one of my favorite sessions from the MA Twitter Spaces. This is from a while back when we read poetry and used the Friday sessions to talk about the more risqué side of African folklore. This session focused on Yoruba love poetry. We started with an exploration of Yoruba courtship practices and then had a discussion about the importance placed on virginity...

In this week’s episode we revisit a conversation about the “Strange Suitor” tale type which shows up repeatedly in the folklore of different African peoples. In these stories, a beautiful girl flouts the conventions of her family or community by rejecting all suitors who approach her. A handsome or fabulously wealthy suitor eventually shows up and she all too happily chooses the man, only to find...

It is not often that I can say I have spent some time among the people whose stories feature in MA discussions so I am thrilled to share this week’s episode with you all. We read from Colleen McElroy’s “Over the lip of the world : among the storytellers of Madagascar” which you can access here . We also talked about talked about Malagasy story telling traditions. By the way: Malagasy or Madagascan...

The late Binyavanga Wainaina’s hilarious essay on how to write about Africa is a great summary of the many ways in which writers, some of them Africans themselves, do the people and the continent a disservice in their writing. As you can imagine, this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. After all, Mythological African’s whole schtick is telling properly contextualized stories from t...

This week, we continue revisiting conversations which happened before the publication of my book, The Runaway Princess and Other Stories . Now, you may all know the “Runaway Princess” is Yennenga of the Mossi-Dagomba , but who are the women in the other stories? In this episode, we read and talked about three of the original stories on which my retellings are based: * The Spirit in the Tree (Zulu,...

In this episode, I chat with Ijeoma Ossi , Mark Mengjo , and Ziziian , three illustrators from the African continent with whom I worked to create portraits and scenes from a selection of stories in my collection of retold folktales: The Runaway Princess and Other Stories . We talked about: * How they forged paths for themselves in the African illustrator space * What challenges they had to surmoun...

In this episode, we read a snippet from “The Runaway Princess and Other Stories”, and had an AMA in which we talked about my (chaotic) writing process, the art and the artists, the power of storytelling to uproot harmful stereotypes, future plans and more! The funniest thing about this episode is that when we recorded it on September 30th 2022, I’d written only four of the twenty stories and poems...

Hi friends, As some of you may know, I focused most of last year on writing and publishing my book: The Runaway Princess and Other Stories , a collection of stories and poems focused on girls and women from African history, legend, mythology and folklore. It includes fifteen short stories, five poems, seventeen countries and over fifty unforgettable girls and women. (Check out a list of all primar...

In this episode, we discuss folklore from the Kotoko people in Chad . We read three stories from Told by Starlight in Chad by Joseph Brahim Seid : * The Eclipse of the Moon * The Kingdom of Wadai * The Most Beautiful Girl on Earth, Hidden Under an Ass’ Skin The Eclipse of the Moon is a lyrical account of a lunar eclipse and the cultural practices related to it. Eclipses are believed to be due to c...

In this episode, we read 4 stories from Eleanor Heady’s “When the Stones Were Soft: East African Fireside Tales” . * Why Cats Live With Women * Why Dogs Live With Men * Men of Different Colors * The Silent Maiden The stories are funny and thought-provoking, poking playfully at stereotypes. “Men of Different Colors” is a story about how humans of different races were created. As a bonus, we also go...

In this episode, we explore how race shows up in African folklore. We read two stories: 1. The Origin of Death from the Kunu (Guinea) 2. The Brightest Sun from Libya The first story describes how different peoples and races came to be according to the Kunu people. Our discussion touched on its similarities to and differences from myths from other parts of the world. We also talked about the implic...

In this episode, we explore the convergence and divergence between science, mythology and folklore. We read a version of the story of why the tortoise has a cracked shell. There are multiple versions of this story which, to me, speaks to our ability as humans to hold a multiplicity of ideas even if contradictory. We also talk about the limitations of taking too hard a stance on one viewpoint, be i...

We read the following stories: - The Hatseller and the Monkeys by Malian storyteller Baba Wagué Diakite - The Scholar and the Monkey - The Great Snake - Nambiashita Mischievous monkeys, clever traders, snakes, evil kings, magical children, flying trees and spinghares! Never a dull moment in African folklore. Reading the "The Great Snake" led to a discussion about snakes. Snakes often get a bad rep...