BRER RABBIT, A PLAY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT: RECREATING BLACK CULTURE THROUGH BRER RABBIT STORIES

For centuries, Brer Rabbit stories have communicated the values and experiences of enslaved Africans and of indigenous African American culture (Abrahams, 1985; Brewer, 1968; Levine, 1977). According to Blassingame (1972, p. 127), Brer Rabbit stories are "a projection of the slave's personal experiences, dreams and hopes." Dunn (1979, p.183) explained that the stories are "paradigms dictating how to act and how to live," and Stuckey (1977, p.xuii) observed that they "revealed more about slave culture than... whole books on slavery by experts. Levine (1977) maintaned that Brer Rabbit stories survived the experiences of slavery and urban poverty because they were a vehicle by which African American cultural values could be shared by the masses of African American people, and Leslie (forthcoming) observed that urban Black mothers continue to share in these values by teaching their children that Brer Rabbit's tricks demonstrate the importance of "protecting the physically small and weak against the physically big and powerful."