The Gravity Myth

The God of Stories Pt.I

I was not always the shining specimen of manhood you see before you. In fact, I was a small child, an easy target for the larger boys. Some boys, even younger than I, would take advantage, pushing me to the ground and insulting me to gain favor with their peers. "Baby Bird", they called me. This upset my mother greatly, but my father understood. The tears I cried were tears of anger, not sadness. He told me that anger could be a great motivator, so long as it was not born of fear. Neither should it turn to obsession. Anger, like any other tool, may be righteous and just. But no matter how righteous my anger may have been, it was impotent. The other boys were bigger and stronger. "That is no matter", my father said, "one does not need to be big or strong in order to overcome." That was the first time that he told me of Anansi.

Physical size mattered not to Anansi, he was but a spider. Anansi lived in a boring world, for there were no stories in it. Stories are the way in which we spread wisdom and mirth. And of all the things on Earth, Anansi wished for unrivaled wisdom the most. So spider Anansi asked the great God Nyame what he could do to receive the gift of stories. Nyame asked for the capture of three terrible creatures; Python, Leopard, and Hornet. Each was bigger and infinitely more dangerous than a spider. But Anasi was cunning. He used traps and trickery to imprison each beast, and delivered them to Nyame. For completing this divine task, Nyame granted all of the world's tales to Anansi, and named him the God of Stories.

All Akan children know of Anansi, he of great wisdom and golden tongue. My father showed me that I did not need strength to find favor with the other boys, but wits. In time, I became their friends. It was I who could make them laugh, or solve problems. I could fashion tools to make their daily work easier, and it helped that as we grew older, I could charm the girls with funny fables and stories of our youthful exploits. They still called me "Baby Bird", no longer for my size, but because my stories were as different and unique as the many songs of the birds. My father began his own fable, saying that my mother was bitten by a spider when pregnant, though instead of venom, Anansi passed to me the golden tongue while I was still in the womb.

As we became men, we began to hear other stories. Stories of white men, come to Akan for trade. Our land was rich with gold, yet that was not the only trade of interest for these foreigners. They were also drawn to the trade of people, and they plundered Akan for both. We saw the Europeans progress inwards, colonizing and purchasing their empires with gold and bodies. We friends deigned this would not be our fate, and we fought the invaders at every possible chance. Like Anansi, we made traps and used cunning to separate explorers from their groups, then left them to the jungles. Still the white traders came in greater numbers, some even aided by traitorous Ashanti.

Eventually, our luck turned on us. We were not beloved of Anansi as we thought, and trickery will only catch shut a number of men before they become wise. Us rogues who lived were declared insurgents, divided and sold. I was chained and shipped a world away. For a time, no tale of cunning could comfort. But hope lost is like an extinguished flame, it may be rekindled.

Five years I labored without hope on a plantation in Virginia. The cotton fields hardened me, brought back the old feeling of righteous anger. It also made me strong, the way I had dreamed of being when I was younger. This newfound strength made me a good worker, and each day I toiled a little harder. I did this not to appease the owner, it was simply easier to focus on the work rather than the atrocities surrounding me. Easier to look away as they brought in new men and women. Easier to escape inside my mind when they made us watch runaways and insubordinates lashed. All of that distance and anger was merely kindling. The spark was a worn collection of pages that were smuggled to me by the house slave, Mr. Joshua. I was not abandoned. Even across the ocean, sweet Anansi provided the gift of stories. Even better was the gift of literacy. Over the course of several weeks, Mr. Joshua held secret sessions with me whenever he could sneak away. Late nights we would study the sounds of written words. And my textbook was 'The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'. Written by a slave, such as I. In this new world where I was allowed no possessions, this hidden book was everything to me.