Retold from: Ashanti folk tales

Ashanti tales from Ghana are, above all, stories about Anansi the spider, a trickster who beats stronger opponents with his wits.

The Ashanti (Asante) are one of the Akan peoples, who live in central Ghana; their old capital is the city of Kumasi. The tales here are called “anansesem”, which means “spider stories”. According to one of them, all stories once belonged to the sky god, until Anansi won them by his cleverness.

Together with the people who were forcibly taken from Africa, Anansi crossed the ocean: his adventures are still told in Jamaica and on other islands of the Caribbean. Ashanti tales in the Twi language, with an English translation alongside, were collected by the British anthropologist Robert Rattray in his book “Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales” (1930).

We have the tale “How Anansi the Spider Got All the Stories”, about where all the world’s stories came from.