Indigenous Trickster Traditions: A Deep Dive

Research for Chapter 6: “Trolling the Gods”

Purpose: Fill the non-European blindspot in Chapter 6, which currently covers Prometheus, Loki, Nasreddin Hodja, and Sun Wukong. This document covers six major trickster traditions from Africa, the Americas, the Pacific, and the African diaspora.

Thesis connection: These traditions demonstrate that trickster-trolling – deliberate provocation that forces communities past their mental blocks – is a universal human phenomenon, not a Western invention. Every culture on Earth has independently developed sacred figures whose entire purpose is to disrupt, provoke, and break rules in order to teach, create, and transform.

1. ANANSI (West Africa to the Caribbean)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Anansi (also spelled Ananse, Kwaku Ananse) originates with the Ashanti (Asante) people of Ghana, part of the larger Akan cultural group of West Africa. The name means “spider” in the Akan language (Britannica). Anansi stories, called Anansesem (“spider stories”), became so dominant in Ashanti oral culture that the term came to encompass all folk narratives in the tradition – every story, regardless of its protagonist, was an “Anansi story.”

The geographic range expanded dramatically through the transatlantic slave trade. Jamaica received the largest concentration of enslaved Ashanti in the Americas, making it the richest repository of Anansi tales outside Africa. The stories spread throughout the Caribbean (Trinidad, Suriname, Curacao, Aruba), into the Gullah communities of the American Southeast, and across Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua). In each location, Anansi adapted to local conditions while retaining his core identity as the small, clever figure who outwits the powerful through sheer audacity.

Relationship to the Establishment

Anansi’s relationship to power is quintessentially trollish: he is small, physically weak, and low in the social hierarchy, yet he consistently outmaneuvers gods, kings, and creatures far more powerful than himself. The Ashanti proverb captures it: “The wisdom of the spider is greater than that of all the world together.” Anansi does not challenge the establishment through force or moral authority – he challenges it through wit, manipulation, and a willingness to violate social norms that stronger figures must observe. He lies, cheats, flatters, and schemes, and the stories do not condemn him for it. Instead, they celebrate the principle that intelligence and audacity can overcome raw power.

In the Ashanti tradition, Anansi’s primary antagonist is Nyame, the Sky God – the supreme deity himself. Anansi does not worship Nyame from a distance; he bargains with him, tricks him, and demands things from him. This is not blasphemy in the Ashanti framework. It is an acknowledgment that the relationship between the small and the powerful is always a negotiation, and that the small have tools the powerful do not expect.

Key Stories

1. How Anansi Got All the Stories (Anansi and the Sky God’s Stories)

This is the foundational Anansi myth. In the beginning, all stories belonged to Nyame, the Sky God. No one on Earth had stories – all narrative, all meaning-making, was hoarded in heaven. Anansi climbed up to Nyame and asked to buy the stories. Nyame laughed and set an impossible price: Anansi must bring him Onini the Python, Osebo the Leopard, Mmoboro the Hornets, and Mmoatia the Fairy (an invisible spirit). These were the most dangerous beings in creation (Britannica).

Anansi captured each through a different trick. He caught the Python by arguing with his wife (within the Python’s hearing) about whether the Python was longer or shorter than a palm branch, provoking the Python’s vanity until it stretched out alongside the branch to prove its length – at which point Anansi tied it down. He captured the Leopard by digging a pit trap and then “helpfully” offering a way out that was actually a binding. He trapped the Hornets by pouring water on them while holding a calabash over his head, telling them it was raining and they should shelter inside the gourd. He caught the Fairy with a tar-covered doll (note the parallel to the Tar Baby story).

Nyame was so impressed that he gave Anansi all the stories. From that day, all stories in the world belonged to the spider. This is why they are called Anansesem.

The trolling argument: Anansi does not earn the stories through obedience, prayer, or moral worthiness. He earns them through provocation and manipulation – exploiting the vanity, fear, and instincts of creatures more powerful than himself. The story encodes a radical principle: narrative (meaning, culture, knowledge) does not belong to the powerful by right. It belongs to whoever is clever enough to seize it.

2. Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom

Nyame gave Anansi a clay pot containing all the wisdom in the world, instructing him to share it with everyone. Anansi immediately decided to keep it for himself. He tried to hide the pot by carrying it up a tall tree, holding it against his chest as he climbed. He kept slipping and falling. His youngest daughter, watching from below, called out: “Father, it would be easier if you tied the pot to your back. Then all your limbs would be free for climbing.”

Anansi flew into a rage. He, who possessed all the wisdom in the world, had been outsmarted by a child. In his fury, he hurled the pot to the ground. It shattered, and wisdom scattered everywhere – carried by wind and water to every corner of the world. This is why no single person has all the wisdom, but everyone has some.

The trolling argument: Anansi’s own greed and ego are the mechanism by which wisdom is distributed to humanity. His failure IS the gift. This is the trickster paradox in its purest form: hoarding creates scarcity; destruction creates abundance. The troll’s worst impulse – wanting to keep everything for himself – produces the best possible outcome for everyone else.

3. Anansi and Tiger (Caribbean variant)

In Jamaican versions, Anansi’s primary antagonist shifts from the Sky God to Tiger (sometimes Bro’ Tiger), representing brute force and authority. In one classic tale, Anansi convinces Tiger that he (Anansi) is deathly ill and needs Tiger to carry him on his back to the doctor. Once mounted, Anansi produces a saddle, then a bridle, then a whip – each introduced with an excuse (“for my comfort,” “so I don’t fall”) – until Tiger realizes he has been turned into Anansi’s horse in front of the entire village. The community roars with laughter. Tiger’s authority is destroyed not through violence but through public humiliation engineered by a figure everyone thought was harmless.

The trolling argument: This is textbook trolling as the book defines it – an escalating provocation that the target cannot recognize until it is too late, resulting in a public revelation that reshapes the social order. The audience (the village) is essential. The troll needs witnesses.

Anansesem as Cultural Preservation Under Slavery

The transmission of Anansi stories across the Middle Passage represents one of the most extraordinary acts of cultural resistance in human history. Enslaved Africans, stripped of every material possession, language, family connection, and social structure, carried their stories in their memories. The Anansesem tradition survived because the stories themselves encoded survival strategies.

Folklorist Martha Warren Beckwith gathered Jamaican Anansi stories during the 1920s and took the unusual step of recording them in Jamaican dialect, recognizing that the language itself was a cultural artifact worth preserving – a living testimony to the people who survived the Middle Passage and slavery.

On plantations, Anansi stories functioned as a coded language of resistance. Open defiance meant death; storytelling was safe. When an enslaved person told a story about a small, clever spider outsmarting a powerful tiger, everyone in the audience understood the real subject. The stories taught practical wisdom: how to manipulate those in power, when to appear harmless, how to use apparent weakness as a weapon. Emily Zobel Marshall’s Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012) documents how these tales served as “transgressive culture” – a way of maintaining identity, encoding resistance, and asserting humanity within the boundaries of captivity (University of the West Indies Press).

Connection to Br’er Rabbit

The Anansi-to-Br’er Rabbit pipeline is one of the clearest examples of trickster evolution in the historical record. As Anansi stories traveled from the Caribbean to the American South (particularly through the Gullah communities of the Georgia and Carolina Sea Islands), the spider gradually transformed into a rabbit – an animal more familiar to the Southern landscape. The structural DNA remained identical: a small, physically weak creature outsmarts larger, more powerful animals through cunning, verbal dexterity, and a willingness to cheat. The Tar Baby story, which appears in both the Anansi tradition (Anansi captures the fairy with a sticky doll) and the Br’er Rabbit tradition, is the clearest genetic marker linking the two.

Academic Sources

• Marshall, Emily Zobel. Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance. University of the West Indies Press, 2012.
• Beckwith, Martha Warren. Jamaica Anansi Stories. American Folk-Lore Society, 1924. (Recorded stories in Jamaican dialect.)
• Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. University of California Press, 1980.
• Rattray, R. S. Akan-Ashanti Folktales. Oxford University Press, 1930. (Early collection of original Ashanti Anansi tales.)
• Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

2. COYOTE (Native American, Multiple Nations)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Coyote is the most widespread trickster figure in North American Indigenous traditions, appearing in the mythology of nations from Alaska to Mesoamerica, spanning the Great Plains, the Southwest, California, the Plateau, and the Great Basin (Britannica). This geographic range is critical: Coyote is NOT a single character but a constellation of related figures who vary enormously across nations. The Navajo Coyote (Ma’ii) is a dangerous, powerful being whose transgressions disrupt cosmic harmony. The Crow Coyote (Old Man Coyote) is a creator god who shapes the world. The Plateau Coyote of the Columbia River nations is a culture hero who prepares the world for human habitation. The California Coyote is often a buffoon whose appetites get him into trouble.

Flattening these into “the Native American Coyote” would be like flattening Zeus, Odin, and Indra into “the Indo-European sky god.” The structural similarities are real, but the differences matter.

Relationship to the Establishment

Coyote’s relationship to authority varies by nation, but certain patterns recur. Coyote exists at the boundary between the sacred and the profane. He is simultaneously a creator and a fool, a benefactor and a menace. Among the Navajo, Coyote is a figure of real spiritual danger – his name is not spoken casually, and his stories carry genuine power. Among the Crow, Old Man Coyote impersonates the Creator himself, literally taking handfuls of mud and shaping people, yet he is also vain, lustful, and frequently outwitted by his own creations (Britannica).

The sacred clown / heyoka tradition (Lakota) represents the institutionalization of Coyote’s trolling impulse into a formal ceremonial role (see section below).

Key Stories

1. Coyote Steals Fire (Multiple Nations – Navajo, Shoshone, Klamath, and others)

This is the direct Prometheus parallel and the strongest thread connecting Coyote to the book’s fire motif. In the Navajo version, in the Black World (the first and lowest level of creation), fire was hoarded by the Fire God, and the people lived in cold and darkness. Coyote devised a plan to steal fire. He attached a cedar bark torch to his tail, visited the Fire God’s camp under a pretext, and when the moment was right, he thrust his tail into the flames and ran. The Fire God pursued him, but Coyote passed the fire to other animals in a relay race until it reached the people.

In the Klamath version, Coyote steals the sun itself. In the Shoshone version, the fire-keepers are distant beings who refuse to share, and Coyote organizes an elaborate heist involving multiple animal allies.

The trolling argument: In every version, the fire-keeper is not evil – they are simply hoarding a resource. Coyote does not negotiate or petition. He steals. He transgresses. The theft is portrayed as cosmically necessary: without Coyote’s willingness to break the rules, humanity would remain in darkness. The parallel to Prometheus is exact, but the cultural framing is different – where Prometheus suffers eternal punishment, Coyote usually gets away with it (or suffers only comic consequences), because in these traditions, the trickster’s transgression is understood as a feature of the cosmos, not a tragic flaw.

2. Coyote and the Origin of Death (Caddo / Multiple Nations)

In the Caddo version: When life began, there was no death, and the world grew overcrowded. The chiefs held a council to decide what to do. One chief proposed that people should die temporarily – they would go to a special grass house, and after ten days a whirlwind would restore them. Coyote objected. He argued that people should die forever, so there would always be enough food and space.

The medicine man built the grass house. A man died. On the tenth day, the whirlwind came to carry his spirit back to life. Just as the whirlwind reached the door of the grass house, Coyote slammed it shut. The whirlwind blew away. From that day forward, death was permanent.

Then Coyote’s own child died. He went weeping to the chiefs, begging them to reopen the grass house. They refused. “You were the one who wanted death to be permanent,” they told him. He had to live with the consequence of his own argument.

The trolling argument: This is the trickster as the agent of irreversible change. Coyote does not intend to create mortality as a cosmic principle – he is being clever, making an argument, trying to seem wise. But his provocation has real consequences that he cannot undo, even when they destroy him personally. The story teaches that disruption is powerful precisely because it cannot be taken back. Every troll, every provocateur, every person who breaks a taboo to make a point, is Coyote slamming the door of the grass house. The world changes, and you do not get to uncreate the change.

3. Coyote and the Columbia River (Plateau Nations)

In Plateau traditions, Coyote travels the world before humans arrive, defeating monsters, shaping the landscape, and establishing the laws of nature. He kills the giant beaver that blocks the Columbia River. He breaks the dam that the Swallow Sisters have built to hoard all the salmon. He tricks the cannibal women into revealing their weakness. Each act of trickery removes a barrier to human flourishing.

But Coyote also makes mistakes. He creates dangerous rapids because he is in a hurry. He puts mosquitoes in the world because he fails to burn a slain monster’s remains properly. He is never purely beneficial – his gifts always come with costs, and his costs always come with lessons.

4. Old Man Coyote Creates the World (Crow)

In Crow tradition, Old Man Coyote is the Creator himself. He takes mud in his hands and molds people. He gives names to all the animals. He establishes the social order. But he does all of this while also being vain, lustful, and foolish. He is not a serene god working from a divine plan – he is a restless, impulsive figure making it up as he goes, and the world bears the marks of his improvisation. The Crow cosmos is explicitly a trickster’s creation: flawed, surprising, full of contradictions, but alive.

The Heyoka / Sacred Clown Tradition (Lakota)

The heyoka represents the most explicit institutionalization of trolling as a sacred function in any culture. Among the Lakota, a heyoka is a person who has received a vision from the Thunderbeings (Wakinyan) and is thereafter required to live as a sacred contrary – doing everything backwards, saying the opposite of what they mean, wearing winter clothes in summer and summer clothes in winter, laughing at funerals and weeping at celebrations (Wikipedia).

The heyoka is not a volunteer or a performer. The role is spiritually imposed. According to Black Elk (1863-1950), the Lakota medicine man, only those who have received visions of the Thunder Beings can take on the role (Wikipedia). The heyoka serves as a mirror for the community, using extreme and disruptive behavior to force people to examine their own assumptions, fears, and rigidities. By violating every social norm in the most public and absurd way possible, the heyoka defines the boundaries of those norms – you cannot understand the shape of a thing until someone steps outside it.

The Lakota tradition holds that people could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens the mind and frees it from rigid preconception. The sacred requires disruption. Without the trickster within the ceremony, the ceremony becomes dead ritual.

The trolling argument: The heyoka is the closest thing in any culture to an officially sanctioned troll. The community does not merely tolerate the contrary behavior; it requires it. The heyoka’s provocations are understood as spiritually necessary – a society that cannot laugh at itself, that cannot absorb disruption, that cannot be forced past its comfortable assumptions, is a society that has lost access to the sacred. This is the book’s thesis in ceremonial form.

Academic Sources

• Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. With commentaries by Karl Kerenyi and C. G. Jung. Bell Publishing, 1956. (Foundational academic study.)
• Bright, William. A Coyote Reader. University of California Press, 1993.
• Cooper, Guy H. “Coyote in Navajo Religion and Cosmology.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies 7.2 (1987).
• Ramsey, Jarold. Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country. University of Washington Press, 1977.
• DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. University of Nebraska Press, 1984. (Source for heyoka accounts.)

3. RAVEN (Pacific Northwest Coast – Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Raven is the central trickster-transformer figure of the Pacific Northwest Coast, appearing most prominently in the traditions of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples of present-day Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, and the islands of Haida Gwaii (Wikipedia). Raven stories also appear among the Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Heiltsuk, and other Northwest Coast nations, as well as among Inuit, Yup’ik, and Athabascan peoples further north and inland.

Raven is arguably the single most important figure in Northwest Coast mythology. He is not merely a trickster – he is the Transformer, the being who shaped the world into its present form. He is simultaneously the noblest and the most debased character in the tradition: the one who gave humanity light, and also a greedy, gluttonous, lustful fool who is constantly getting into trouble because he cannot control his appetites.

Relationship to the Establishment

Raven’s relationship to power is unique among trickster figures. He does not simply defy the powerful – he is powerful, cosmically so, but he uses his power in ways that are indistinguishable from selfishness. His gifts to humanity are almost always accidental byproducts of his greed. He steals the sun not because humanity needs light, but because he wants it. The fact that humanity benefits is a side effect. This makes Raven a more complex figure than a simple Promethean hero: his motivations are selfish, but the consequences are cosmically generous.

Key Stories

1. Raven and the Box of Daylight (Tlingit)

This is the crown jewel of Northwest Coast mythology and one of the great fire-theft stories of world literature. In the beginning, the world was in total darkness. An old chief – Naas-shaki Yeil, the Old Man at the Head of the Nass River – hoarded all the light in three boxes: one for the stars, one for the moon, and one for the sun. He kept them in his house, and the world remained dark.

Raven wanted the light. He transformed himself into a hemlock needle and dropped into the water cup of the Old Man’s daughter. She swallowed the needle and became pregnant. She gave birth to Raven in the form of a human baby – the Old Man’s grandson.

Raven, as the baby, began to cry for the box of stars. Tlingit grandparents are famously indulgent, and the Old Man could not bear to see his grandson unhappy. He gave Raven the box. Raven played with it, then opened the lid and let the stars fly up through the chimney into the sky.

Then Raven cried for the box of the moon. The Old Man gave it to him but blocked the chimney first. Raven played with it and then rolled it out the door, where it flew up into the sky.

Finally, Raven cried for the box of the sun. The Old Man resisted longest, but Raven screamed and wailed until he relented. This time, Raven transformed back into his bird form, seized the sun in his beak, and flew up through the chimney and out into the world. He opened the box and the sun flew into the sky, illuminating the world for the first time.

There are many versions of this story across Tlingit communities, each unique to specific villages and individual storytellers, but the core structure remains: the trickster infiltrates the house of the powerful, exploits their emotional vulnerabilities (the Old Man’s love for his grandchild), and releases a hoarded resource into the world.

The trolling argument: Raven’s method is pure social engineering. He does not fight the Old Man or steal the boxes by force. He exploits the most sacred of social bonds – the grandparent-grandchild relationship – to manipulate the most powerful being in the world. The disruption is intimate, personal, and devastating. The Old Man is not defeated by a rival; he is undone by love. This is trolling at its most sophisticated: the provocateur does not attack the establishment’s strength; he attacks its assumptions about what is safe.

2. Raven and the Tide

In Tlingit tradition, Raven fights with Tide Lady (or the Old Woman Who Controls the Tide) to bring about low tide. The sea was always high, and people could not gather food from the beaches. Raven tricked or coerced the Tide Lady into letting the waters recede, creating the tidal cycle that allows humans to harvest shellfish, seaweed, and other coastal food sources.

This story, transcribed from Tlingit Elder Susie James’ oral accounts by Nora and Dick Dauenhauer, demonstrates Raven as a culture hero whose confrontational methods create practical, lasting benefits for human communities.

3. Raven and the First Men (Haida)

In Haida tradition, Raven discovers the first humans trapped inside a clamshell on the beach at Rose Spit in Haida Gwaii. He coaxes them out – or, in some versions, frightens them out. The humans are tiny, terrified, and helpless. Raven finds them amusing. He does not create them out of love or divine purpose; he finds them, and his curiosity and mischief bring them into the world.

This creation story – immortalized in Bill Reid’s famous sculpture at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver – presents creation not as a solemn act of divine will but as a trickster’s whim (Wikipedia). Humanity exists because Raven was bored and curious. The theological implications are profound and playful at the same time.

The Potlatch Connection

The potlatch ceremony of the Northwest Coast peoples (Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingit, Haida, and others) represents, in the book’s framework, a form of institutionalized provocation. The potlatch is a ceremonial feast in which a host demonstrates their status by giving away – or in extreme cases destroying – enormous quantities of wealth. The word comes from Chinook Jargon paɬaˑc, meaning “to give away.”

Among the Kwakwaka’wakw (historically called Kwakiutl), potlatches became arenas of fierce competitive generosity. Rival chiefs would attempt to outdo each other in the scale of their giving, escalating until the displays reached extraordinary proportions. In 1803, a Nuu-chah-nulth chief gave away 200 muskets, 200 yards of cloth, 100 mirrors, and gunpowder. By the early 20th century, Kwakwaka’wakw potlatches involved gas-powered boats, sewing machines, pool tables, and gramophones.

The Canadian government banned the potlatch from 1885 to 1951, recognizing it as a threat to the colonial economic order (The Canadian Encyclopedia). The logic of the potlatch – that status comes from giving, not accumulating – was fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. The ban is itself evidence of the potlatch’s disruptive power.

The trolling argument: The potlatch is ritualized one-upmanship, a ceremonial escalation that forces participants to constantly raise the stakes. It is generosity weaponized as provocation. “You gave away ten canoes? I will give away twenty and set five on fire.” The potlatch functions exactly like a trolling escalation: each move forces the opponent to respond, and the inability to respond is the ultimate defeat. The connection to Raven is structural – Raven’s mythology and the potlatch ceremony emerge from the same cultural logic that treats disruption, excess, and transgression as creative forces.

Academic Sources

• Boas, Franz. Tsimshian Mythology. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 31, 1916.
• Swanton, John R. Tlingit Myths and Texts. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 39, 1909.
• Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Richard Dauenhauer. Haa Shuka, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives. University of Washington Press, 1987.
• Reid, Bill, and Robert Bringhurst. The Raven Steals the Light. Douglas & McIntyre, 1984.
• Jonaitis, Aldona. Art of the Northwest Coast. University of Washington Press, 2006.

4. ESHU / ELEGBA (Yoruba to Diaspora)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Eshu (Esu, Elegba, Elegbara) is an orisha (divine being) in the Yoruba religion, originating with the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria and Benin. Worship of Eshu dates back at least to 500-300 BC, though the tradition may be much older. Eshu is not merely a trickster – he is the divine messenger, the guardian of the crossroads, the intermediary between humans and gods, and the enforcer of cosmic balance (Wikipedia).

Through the transatlantic slave trade, Eshu traveled to the Americas and evolved into related but distinct figures: Elegua in Cuban Santeria/Lukumi, Papa Legba in Haitian Vodou (though scholars insist on the distinction – Legba derives from the Fon-Ewe tradition of the Dahomey Kingdom, not directly from Yoruba Eshu), and Exu in Brazilian Candomble and Umbanda. Each diaspora form adapted to local conditions while retaining core attributes: the crossroads, the role of messenger, the trickster’s duality.

Relationship to the Establishment

Eshu’s relationship to the divine order is unique among trickster figures: he is not outside the establishment – he IS the establishment’s operating system. In Yoruba ritual, Eshu must be propitiated first, before any other orisha, and thanked last. No ceremony, divination, or sacrifice can proceed without first honoring Eshu. He is the gatekeeper. He carries messages between humans and gods, distributes sacrifices to the correct recipients, and – crucially – can choose to deliver those messages accurately or to scramble them.

This gives Eshu absolute structural power. He does not rebel against the divine order; he controls the communication channels that make the divine order possible. If Eshu is not satisfied, prayers go unanswered, sacrifices go astray, and the entire system breaks down. The trickster is not the enemy of the system; the trickster is the infrastructure.

Key Stories

1. The Two-Colored Hat (The Quarrel of the Friends)

This is the most famous Eshu story and one of the great trolling parables of world mythology. Two men were close friends whose farms lay on opposite sides of a road. One day, Eshu walked down the road between them wearing a hat that was black on one side and red on the other (in some versions, black and white; in others, red and blue). He also stuck his pipe in the back of his neck and tied his staff backwards on his robe, so that he appeared to be walking in the opposite direction depending on which side you viewed him from.

After Eshu passed, the two friends began discussing the stranger. “Did you see the man in the black hat?” asked one. “What are you talking about? His hat was red,” said the other. The argument escalated. Each man was absolutely certain of what he had seen. They accused each other of lying, of failing eyesight, of bad faith. The argument destroyed their friendship.

When they brought their dispute before the village elders, Eshu appeared, revealed the two-colored hat, and claimed full responsibility. “Spreading strife is my greatest delight,” he said (in some versions). The elders were furious. But the point had been made: both men were right, and both men were wrong. Their certainty was the problem, not their eyesight.

The trolling argument: This is the purest possible expression of the book’s thesis. Eshu’s provocation does not create a false conflict – he reveals a conflict that already existed, hidden beneath the surface of friendship. Both men were working with partial information and absolute certainty. The trickster’s disruption forces them (and the audience) to confront the fundamental problem of perspective: you can only ever see one side of the hat. The “troll” does not create the division; he exposes it. He forces the community to deal with a reality they would rather ignore.

2. Eshu and the Disobedient Farmer

A farmer neglected to make the proper sacrifice to Eshu before planting. His crops failed. His neighbor, who had honored Eshu, had a bountiful harvest. The lesson is structural: the trickster-gatekeeper cannot be ignored. You do not get to skip the uncomfortable, unpredictable element and proceed directly to the orderly business of dealing with the other gods. Eshu demands engagement. The chaos must be acknowledged before the order can function.

3. Eshu as Agent of Ifa Divination

In the Ifa divination system, Eshu is the mechanism by which fate is revealed. The babalawo (diviner) consults the oracle, but it is Eshu who ensures that the correct message arrives. When Eshu is honored, the divination is true. When he is neglected, the messages are garbled. This places the trickster at the very center of the truth-seeking process. You cannot access truth without going through the trickster first.

Diaspora Distinctions (Scholarly Note)

Scholars are emphatic that the diaspora figures, while related, should not be conflated:

• Papa Legba (Haitian Vodou) derives from Fon-Ewe linguistic roots in the Dahomey Kingdom (modern Benin), not directly from Yoruba Eshu. Legba guards the boundary between the spirit world (Ginea) and the human world. He is a lwa, not an orisha (Wikipedia).
• Elegua (Cuban Santeria/Lukumi) is closest to the original Yoruba Eshu but developed distinct characteristics in Cuba, particularly through the influence of the Ifa sect of Babalawos.
• Exu (Brazilian Candomble and Umbanda) absorbed influences from Indigenous Brazilian and Catholic traditions, sometimes being misidentified with the devil by colonial missionaries – a misidentification that itself reveals colonial anxiety about the trickster figure.

Academic Sources

• Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. University of California Press, 1980.
• Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. Vintage, 1984.
• Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1988. (Links Eshu to African American literary tradition.)
• Wescott, Joan. “The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster.” Africa 32.4 (1962): 336-354.
• Ogundipe, Ayodele. “Esu Elegbara, the Yoruba God of Chance and Uncertainty.” Journal of African Civilizations 1 (1980).

5. MAUI (Polynesian – Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Maui (Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga in full Maori naming) is the great culture hero and trickster of Polynesian mythology, appearing across an enormous geographic range: Hawai’i, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, the Marquesas, and virtually every inhabited island group in the Polynesian triangle (Wikipedia). The Maui myths are among the most widely distributed single-character story cycles in the world, spanning thousands of miles of ocean across cultures that diverged thousands of years ago.

Maui is unique among the trickster figures in this document because he is most often framed as a straightforward hero – a demigod who uses his cleverness to benefit humanity. But his methods are pure trickster: deception, theft, shape-shifting, rule-breaking, and a willingness to challenge gods directly. His death – crushed by the goddess of death while attempting to conquer mortality itself – marks the boundary of the trickster’s power and serves as a meditation on the limits of provocation.

Relationship to the Establishment

Maui’s relationship to divine authority is confrontational from birth. In many versions, he is a premature or rejected child – his mother Taranga throws him into the sea wrapped in a tuft of her hair, and he is raised by the ocean or by his ancestor Tama-nui-ki-te-Rangi. He must prove himself to his own family, who initially reject him. His entire career is a series of provocations against the established order: he challenges the sun, steals from the gods, reshapes the landscape, and ultimately confronts death itself.

Unlike Anansi or Coyote, Maui rarely tricks through subtlety. He is a brute-force trickster, using shape-shifting and sheer audacity rather than cunning manipulation. He does not trick the sun into slowing down; he beats it with a jawbone club until it agrees. He does not sneak fire away from Mahuika; he provokes her into a rage and then survives the consequences.

Key Stories

1. Maui Steals Fire from Mahuika (FIRE THREAD – Maori version)

Maui wanted to know where fire came from. One night, he crept through his village and extinguished every fire. In the morning, when the people discovered their cold hearths, Maui’s mother Taranga said someone would have to visit Mahuika, the goddess of fire who lived in a burning mountain at the end of the Earth, and ask for more.

Maui volunteered. Mahuika, who was his ancestress, greeted him and pulled off one of her burning fingernails as a gift of fire. Maui took it, walked away – and extinguished it. He went back and asked for another. Mahuika gave him another fingernail. He extinguished it. He returned again. And again. And again. Each time, he extinguished the gift and returned asking for more.

Finally, Mahuika realized she was being trolled. She had only one fingernail left. In a fury, she hurled the last nail at Maui and then set the entire world on fire – land and sea alike. Maui transformed into a hawk and called on Tawhirimatea, god of weather, and Whaitiri, goddess of thunder, to send rain (Wikipedia). The deluge extinguished the great fire, but Mahuika’s last fingernail had embedded itself in the mahoe and kaikomako trees. Maui brought sticks from these trees back to his village and showed his people how to make fire by rubbing them together.

The trolling argument: Maui’s fire theft is not a single act of defiance; it is a deliberate, escalating provocation. He extinguishes each gift specifically to force Mahuika to give more, pushing her past her limits until the confrontation becomes cosmic. The fire is not stolen in secret – it is extracted through sustained, intentional provocation that forces the fire-keeper to reveal the fundamental source of fire (the trees) rather than just giving away disposable portions (the fingernails). The troll does not want the small gift; the troll wants to break the system that distributes gifts, revealing the source itself.

2. Maui Snares the Sun (Hawaiian and Maori versions)

Maui’s mother (Hina in Hawaiian tradition, Taranga in Maori) complained that the sun moved too fast across the sky. Days were too short to dry bark cloth (Hawaiian) or to complete the work of living (Maori). Maui decided to slow the sun.

In the Hawaiian version, Maui climbed Haleakala (“House of the Sun”) and lassoed the sun’s rays as it rose, using a rope braided from his sister’s hair. He beat the sun until it agreed to travel slowly in summer and quickly in winter (Wikipedia).

In the Maori version, the preparation is more elaborate. Maui and his brothers spent days weaving ropes from flax – square ropes (tuamaka), flat ropes (paharahara), and twisted round ropes. Maui recited a special karakia (incantation) over them. On the twelfth night, they traveled to the edge of a great red-hot pit where Tama-nui-te-ra, the sun, slept. They laid their snares and waited. When the sun rose, they caught it and Maui beat it with his grandmother’s jawbone until it agreed to travel more slowly.

The trolling argument: The sun is the ultimate authority – the most powerful, most visible, most untouchable force in the natural world. Maui does not ask the sun to slow down. He does not pray. He ambushes it, binds it, and beats it into submission. The cultural message is unmistakable: even the most powerful forces in the universe must be challenged when they fail to serve human needs. The trickster’s job is to make the untouchable answer for itself.

3. Maui Fishes Up Islands (Maori)

Using a magical fishhook made from his grandmother’s jawbone, Maui went fishing with his brothers and hauled up a giant fish from the ocean floor – Te Ika-a-Maui, “The Fish of Maui,” which became the North Island of New Zealand. His canoe became the South Island (Te Waka a Maui). The geographic features of New Zealand map onto the fish: Wellington is the head, the Northland is the tail, the Coromandel Peninsula is the barb at the base of the tail, Taranaki and the East Coast are the fins.

Maui instructed his brothers to wait while he performed the proper rituals over the fish. But they ignored him and began cutting it up for themselves, and the chopping created the mountains and valleys of the island’s landscape.

4. Maui’s Death – The Failed Troll (Maori)

Maui’s final act was his attempt to conquer death itself by crawling through the body of Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess of death. The plan was to enter through her mouth (or, in the more common version, between her thighs) while she slept, travel through her body, and emerge from the other side, thereby reversing death. He warned his bird companions to stay absolutely silent.

As Maui entered the goddess’s body, the fantail bird (tiwakawaka) burst out laughing at the absurd sight. Hine-nui-te-po awoke and crushed Maui between her thighs (or between her obsidian teeth). Maui died. This was the first death of a demigod, and from that moment, all humans were mortal (Wikipedia).

The trolling argument: This is the trickster’s limit. Maui pushed every boundary successfully – he slowed the sun, stole fire, reshaped the earth – but death was the one authority he could not provoke into submission. The fantail’s laugh is the crucial detail: the trickster’s weapon (laughter, absurdity, disruption) is also his undoing. The same force that makes trolling effective – the inability to keep a straight face in the presence of the absurd – is what kills Maui. The story does not condemn Maui for trying; it mourns his failure while acknowledging that the attempt was magnificent. Death cannot be trolled. Everything else can.

Academic Sources

• Beckwith, Martha. Hawaiian Mythology. Yale University Press, 1940.
• Westervelt, W. D. Legends of Maui – A Demi-God of Polynesia. Hawaiian Gazette Co., 1910. (Available at sacred-texts.com.)
• Orbell, Margaret. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Maori Myth and Legend. Canterbury University Press, 1995.
• Luomala, Katharine. Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks: His Oceanic and European Biographers. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1949.
• Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. “Maui Legends.” (teara.govt.nz.)

6. BR’ER RABBIT / THE SIGNIFYING MONKEY (African American)

Origin Culture and Geographic Range

Br’er Rabbit and the Signifying Monkey represent the trickster tradition as it evolved among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the American South. Br’er Rabbit (Brother Rabbit) descends directly from West and Central African hare tricksters, transmitted through the Middle Passage and shaped by the conditions of plantation slavery. The stories are most closely associated with the Gullah communities of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands, and were brought to wider (white) awareness through Joel Chandler Harris’s controversial Uncle Remus collections (1880-1918), which presented the stories in a plantation dialect framework that has been criticized for romanticizing slavery even as it preserved the tales (New Georgia Encyclopedia).

The Signifying Monkey is a related but distinct figure from African American oral culture, rooted in male-dominated verbal performance traditions (the dozens, toasts, signifyin’). Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s landmark study The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988) traces this figure back to the Yoruba trickster Eshu-Elegba, arguing that the Signifying Monkey represents the survival and evolution of West African trickster principles in African American literary and verbal culture (Wikipedia).

Relationship to the Establishment

Br’er Rabbit’s relationship to power is the most politically charged of any trickster tradition in this document, because the “establishment” he trolls is not a divine order but a human one: the institution of slavery and the racial hierarchy of the antebellum and post-bellum American South.

Br’er Rabbit is small, weak, and low-status. His antagonists – Br’er Fox, Br’er Bear, Br’er Wolf – are larger, stronger, and hold structural advantages. The stories encode a specific survival philosophy: the powerless can survive and even triumph if they are willing to use intelligence, verbal dexterity, and a deep understanding of their oppressor’s psychology. Br’er Rabbit does not fight; he manipulates. He does not rebel; he tricks. He does not demand justice; he engineers situations in which justice happens as if by accident.

On the plantations, these stories served a dual function. For the enslaved audience, they were instruction manuals: how to appear non-threatening while manipulating the powerful, how to use the master’s assumptions against him, how to survive in a system designed to destroy you. For the enslaver audience – who sometimes overheard the stories and found them merely entertaining – they were invisible. The trickster hid in plain sight.

Key Stories

1. The Tar Baby

Br’er Fox, tired of being outwitted by Br’er Rabbit, constructs a figure made of tar and turpentine and places it by the side of the road. Br’er Rabbit comes along and greets the Tar Baby politely. The Tar Baby does not respond. Br’er Rabbit greets it again, more insistently. Silence. Br’er Rabbit, offended by what he perceives as rudeness, punches the Tar Baby and gets stuck. He kicks it and gets stuck. He headbutts it and gets stuck. Soon he is completely immobilized.

Br’er Fox emerges, gloating. “I got you now,” he says. He debates how to dispose of Br’er Rabbit: roasting, hanging, skinning, drowning. To each suggestion, Br’er Rabbit says, “Do whatever you want, just PLEASE don’t throw me in the briar patch.” Br’er Fox, wanting to inflict maximum suffering, throws him into the briar patch – which is exactly where Br’er Rabbit was born and raised. Rabbits thrive in brambles. Br’er Rabbit scampers away, laughing.

The trolling argument: The Tar Baby story operates on two levels of trolling. First, Br’er Rabbit is trolled by the Tar Baby – his own social expectations (you must respond to a greeting) are weaponized against him. Second, Br’er Rabbit trolls Br’er Fox with reverse psychology so flagrant that it should be transparent, yet it works because Br’er Fox’s cruelty blinds him to the trick. The oppressor’s desire to inflict maximum pain becomes the mechanism of the trickster’s escape. The story teaches that the powerful are most vulnerable when they think they have won.

The international tale type classification (ATU 175, “The Tar-Baby and the Rabbit”) traces variants across West Africa, Central Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South (Wikipedia). The Anansi tradition includes a version in which Anansi uses a tar-covered doll to capture a fairy. The structural DNA connects Ashanti Ghana to the Georgia Sea Islands.

2. The Signifying Monkey and the Lion

The Signifying Monkey is perched in a tree, talking trash to the Lion below. He tells the Lion that the Elephant has been saying terrible things about the Lion’s mother, his wife, his manhood. The Monkey reports the Elephant’s “words” in vivid, provocative detail. The Lion, enraged, goes to confront the Elephant and gets beaten badly. He returns, battered, and the Monkey laughs from his tree.

The key: the Elephant never said any of those things. The Monkey fabricated the insults, knowing that the Lion would take them literally. The Monkey’s power lies entirely in his mastery of figurative language – he knows that the Lion, who operates in a world of literal force, cannot distinguish between a report and a provocation, between what was said and what was meant. The trickster wins because he understands language better than the powerful do.

The trolling argument: Gates’s analysis reveals the Signifying Monkey as a figure who weaponizes the gap between literal and figurative meaning. The Monkey does not fight; he talks. His weapon is not strength but interpretation – the ability to make words mean what he wants them to mean, and to exploit the powerful’s inability to read between the lines. This is the essence of verbal trolling: the trickster says one thing and means another, and the target’s inability to detect the double meaning is what destroys them.

3. Br’er Rabbit and the Well

Br’er Rabbit falls into a well by accidentally jumping into one of the buckets. As he sits at the bottom, Br’er Fox comes along. Br’er Rabbit tells him, “I’m down here fishing, and the fish are biting like crazy.” Br’er Fox jumps into the other bucket and descends as Br’er Rabbit rises. As they pass each other, Br’er Rabbit says, “Some go up and some go down.”

The trolling argument: The trickster turns his own catastrophe into someone else’s trap. He does not escape the well through physical effort; he escapes by reframing the situation – making the bottom of a well look like a fishing opportunity. The trickster’s power is narrative control: whoever defines the story controls the outcome.

The Signifying Tradition as Framework

Gates’s The Signifying Monkey (1988) provides the most sophisticated academic framework for understanding the African American trickster tradition. Gates argues that “Signifyin(g)” – the practice of indirect, figurative, often oppositional verbal play – is the foundational rhetorical strategy of African American culture, descended directly from the Yoruba trickster Eshu-Elegba’s association with figurative language and double-voicedness.

Gates identifies two modes of literary Signifyin(g): motivated (oppositional, critical, designed to challenge) and unmotivated (cooperative, encoding admiration and respect). Both modes rely on the trickster principle: meaning is never fixed, language is always a game, and the person who controls interpretation controls reality.

The book won the American Book Award in 1989 and established Gates as one of the most important African American literary theorists of the late 20th century. Prominent critic Houston A. Baker called it “a significant move forward in Afro-American literary study” (Wikipedia).

Academic Sources

• Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1988. (Foundational text.)
• Marshall, Emily Zobel. American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
• Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. 1880. (Problematic but historically significant collection.)
• Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Roberts, John W. From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.

THE FIRE THREAD: Cross-Cultural Fire/Light Theft

The fire/light theft motif appears in four of the six traditions covered here, plus Prometheus and (tangentially) Sun Wukong from the existing chapter:

The universality of this motif argues that every human culture has independently recognized the same principle: knowledge, warmth, light, and storytelling are resources that the powerful hoard and the trickster liberates. The trickster’s theft is never condemned in the long run – even Prometheus, who suffers most, is ultimately vindicated. The theft is understood as cosmically necessary. Civilization cannot exist without it.

MAPPING THE TROLLING ARGUMENT: Why These Traditions Prove the Thesis

1. Universality Demolishes the “Western Trickster” Myth

The book’s core argument – that high-effort trolling is a feature of civilization, not a bug – gains enormous force from the fact that every major culture on Earth, independently and without contact, developed sacred figures whose primary function is deliberate provocation. Anansi in West Africa, Coyote across North America, Raven on the Northwest Coast, Eshu among the Yoruba, Maui across Polynesia, and Br’er Rabbit in the African American tradition all occupy the same structural position: the small, clever, rule-breaking figure who creates through destruction and teaches through chaos.

This is not cultural diffusion. The Ashanti did not borrow from the Tlingit. The Maori did not learn from the Navajo. These traditions developed independently across thousands of years and thousands of miles, yet they converge on the same figure with the same function. The trickster-troll is not a cultural artifact; it is a cognitive universal. Human societies need the disruptive figure the way ecosystems need fire: without periodic destruction of the old growth, the forest dies.

2. The Trickster is Always Sacred, Never Merely Tolerated

In every tradition studied here, the trickster is not merely tolerated or grudgingly accepted – the trickster holds a sacred, often central position in the cosmological order. Eshu must be propitiated first in Yoruba ritual. The heyoka is required at Lakota ceremonies. Raven is the Transformer who shaped the world. Coyote is the Creator among the Crow. Anansi owns all stories.

This directly contradicts the modern framing of trolling as purely destructive. These cultures did not fail to see the destructiveness of the trickster – they saw it clearly. Coyote creates death. Raven’s greed causes suffering. Anansi’s selfishness scatters wisdom. But they understood that the destruction was inseparable from the creation. You cannot have light without the theft. You cannot have stories without the con. You cannot have fire without the transgression.

3. The Trickster Creates Through Destruction

Every tradition demonstrates the same paradox: the trickster’s worst qualities produce the best results.

• Anansi’s greed (wanting to keep all wisdom) causes wisdom to scatter to everyone.
• Coyote’s impulsiveness (slamming the door) creates mortality, which gives life meaning.
• Raven’s selfishness (wanting the sun for himself) illuminates the entire world.
• Maui’s recklessness (provoking Mahuika to fury) forces the secret of fire-making into the open.
• Eshu’s mischief (the two-colored hat) exposes the limits of individual perspective.
• Br’er Rabbit’s desperation (the briar patch trick) turns the oppressor’s cruelty into the instrument of liberation.

This is the mechanism the book identifies as “trolling”: provocation that forces a system past its comfortable equilibrium and into a new configuration. The trickster does not plan the new configuration. He simply disrupts the old one with enough force that something new must emerge.

4. The Trickster as Resistance Figure (The Political Dimension)

The Anansi-to-Br’er Rabbit tradition adds a dimension that the European trickster tradition largely lacks: the trickster as a weapon of the oppressed against systemic power. Enslaved Africans did not have access to force, legal rights, or institutional power. What they had was narrative – the ability to encode resistance in stories, to teach survival strategies through entertainment, to maintain cultural identity in conditions designed to erase it.

The Signifying Monkey tradition extends this into linguistic theory: the trickster’s power is the power of interpretation, of making words mean something other than what the powerful think they mean. This is not ancient history. It is the direct ancestor of contemporary African American rhetorical traditions (the dozens, hip-hop, internet signifyin’) and, the book argues, of the broader trolling tradition that has shaped online discourse.

5. The Trickster’s Failure is Also Sacred (Maui’s Death)

Maui’s death attempting to conquer mortality provides the necessary counterweight to the book’s argument. The trickster is not omnipotent. Not everything can be trolled. Death, in the Polynesian framework, is the boundary beyond which provocation cannot reach. The fantail’s laugh – the same disruptive, absurd, uncontrollable laughter that makes the trickster effective – is what kills Maui. The weapon becomes the undoing.

This is the chapter’s natural endpoint and its most important nuance: the trickster tradition does not argue that all disruption is good, or that all provocation produces positive change. It argues that disruption is necessary and that the societies that understand this – that build the trickster into their ceremonies, their stories, and their social structures – are the societies that survive. But it also acknowledges that the trickster, like fire, can consume the one who wields it.

KEY ACADEMIC WORKS (Master Bibliography)

Foundational Trickster Theory

• Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. With commentaries by Karl Kerenyi and C. G. Jung. Bell Publishing, 1956.
• Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
• Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. University of California Press, 1980.
• Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1988.

West African / Anansi

• Rattray, R. S. Akan-Ashanti Folktales. Oxford University Press, 1930.
• Marshall, Emily Zobel. Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance. University of the West Indies Press, 2012.
• Beckwith, Martha Warren. Jamaica Anansi Stories. American Folk-Lore Society, 1924.

Native American / Coyote

• Bright, William. A Coyote Reader. University of California Press, 1993.
• Ramsey, Jarold. Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country. University of Washington Press, 1977.
• Cooper, Guy H. “Coyote in Navajo Religion and Cosmology.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies 7.2 (1987).

Pacific Northwest / Raven

• Swanton, John R. Tlingit Myths and Texts. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 39, 1909.
• Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Richard Dauenhauer. Haa Shuka, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives. University of Washington Press, 1987.
• Boas, Franz. Tsimshian Mythology. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 31, 1916.
• Reid, Bill, and Robert Bringhurst. The Raven Steals the Light. Douglas & McIntyre, 1984.

Yoruba / Eshu

• Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. Vintage, 1984.
• Wescott, Joan. “The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster.” Africa 32.4 (1962): 336-354.
• Ogundipe, Ayodele. “Esu Elegbara, the Yoruba God of Chance and Uncertainty.” Journal of African Civilizations 1 (1980).

Polynesian / Maui

• Beckwith, Martha. Hawaiian Mythology. Yale University Press, 1940.
• Westervelt, W. D. Legends of Maui – A Demi-God of Polynesia. Hawaiian Gazette Co., 1910.
• Luomala, Katharine. Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks: His Oceanic and European Biographers. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1949.
• Orbell, Margaret. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Maori Myth and Legend. Canterbury University Press, 1995.

African American / Br’er Rabbit / Signifying Monkey

• Marshall, Emily Zobel. American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
• Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Roberts, John W. From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.

General / Cross-Cultural

• Hynes, William J., and William G. Doty, eds. Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. University of Alabama Press, 1993.
• Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara. “‘A Tolerated Margin of Mess’: The Trickster and His Tales Reconsidered.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 11.3 (1975): 147-186.
• DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Research compiled for Chapter 6, “Trolling the Gods.” Approximately 5,800 words. Ready for integration into the chapter draft.

Source URLs

• Trickster — Wikipedia
• Coyote (mythology) — Wikipedia
• Anansi — Wikipedia
• Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World (1998)
• Paul Radin, The Trickster (1956)
• Raven in Tlingit/Haida mythology — Wikipedia