Reading Notes: South African Folktales, Part A

This week, I chose to read South African Folktales. In the story "Tink-Tinkje", the birds decide they want to have a king since humans and animals have a king. They cannot decide on who the king should be, and go through many suggestions. First, they suggest Ostrich since he is the largest, but decide against him because he cannot fly. They think suggest Eagle because he is strong, but then decide he is too ugly to be king. The next suggestion is Vulture for his ability to fly the highest, but the birds deem him too dirty and smelly. Someone suggests Peacock since he is beautiful, but someone else says his feet and voice are too ugly. The final suggestion is Owl because he can see well. They decide against him since he only comes out at night. One bird suggests that whoever can fly the highest will become the king of the birds. The other birds all in agreement on this system. Vulture flies for three days straight and thinks he has won the title, but then he hears "T-sie, t-sie, t-sie" above him. He looks up and sees Tink-tinkje, who clung to Vulture's feathers and was never felt because he is so small and light. This continues for another couple days. The other birds are mad at what Tink-tinkje has done and say he must die. He hides in a mouse hole and Owl is ordered to wait for him to leave. When the day comes, however, Owl falls asleep and Tink-tinkje escapes to a tree. White-crow is so disgusted he refuses to speak and hasn't spoken since.

Golden-headed Cisticola (Cistocola exilis) by patrickkavanagh

Story source: South African Folk-Tales by James Honey (1910)

Comments

Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...

Tech Tip: Word Counter

This word counter is so helpful! I usually go to a word counter website and write my text in there, then copy and paste it. This extension makes it easy to just write where I will posting my text so I don't have to flip between tabs. I usually am worried about meeting the minimum word count, but I usually don't have an issue hitting, I am just afraid that I won't. I think I am generally bad in estimating numbers in general, so I probably would be very off in my estimate if I just tried tried to guess how long my writing is.

Time Strategies

For this class, I think what will be most helpful is setting "class times" for myself. Since there are no set meeting times, I can give myself times set aside solely for this course instead of just working on it during my homework time. The first article I read was Amanda Oliver's " Time Management Tips Just for Creatives ." While most tips in this article were written for creative careers such as artists or designers, many of them can be applied to an academic environment. A couple that stuck out to me that I think I will be able to use in my classes this semester are to manage your energy instead of just managing time and to start with the most daunting task while ending with your favorite task. I also read the article " 11 Ways Unsuccessful People Mismanage Their Time ." The best tips that are applicable to this course are to schedule and prioritize. The article that resonated with me most, however, was " How to Beat Procrastination ." Th...

Shea's Myth-Folk Blog

Search This Blog