The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

Read Hamilton’s first novel, Zeely (1967); The Planet of Junior Brown (1971); or another book she’s written and connect the folktales to her work. How do her stories spotlight teamwork, community, the supernatural, and so on?

Hamilton divided the book into four parts. Choose a story for each part and think of a thread that connects them. Use passages from the text to support your argument.

Connect the folktales in Hamilton’s book to other folktales or fairy tales in culture. There are numerous options, from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” (1837) to “Little Red Riding Hood” (ca 1600s). If you choose the latter, you could compare “Little Red Riding Hood” to “A Wolf and Little Daughter.”

The folktales teach the reader many lessons about teamwork, community, courage, endurance, and so on. Identify the lessons you think are most important and explain how the folktale teaches it.

The stories contain many literary devices—imagery, irony, dialogue, and more. Choose the literary devices that help bring the folktales to life and explain what these devices do and how they work in the applicable stories.

Put Hamilton’s version of the folktales in conversation with other iterations. Review The Negro Book of Folklore edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps or check out Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. What changes do you notice? How does the diction differ? How does the readability increase or decrease?

Connect the folktales to the history of slavery. What can the reader learn about slavery from the stories without having to be an expert on the subject? In other words, how do the stories reflect the traumatic, oppressive conditions of countless Black people? Conversely, how do the stories transcend their predicament?

Choose two of the most captivating characters from the folktales and explain what makes these humans or creatures arresting. Why do these characters deserve the spotlight more than the others?