Summary

Ndibe recalls how as a child whose parents could not afford a television, he listened to his family’s folktales. The Igbo folktales have reoccurring characters and formulas, including the same opening line meaning “I have a story to tell you” (150). As a parent in the US, he tells them to his children and is even invited to share them at his children’s school. For a second-grade class in New Britain, Connecticut, he translates an Igbo tale about how in a time of famine, Tortoise, the trickster of Igbo folklore, flatters the birds into bringing him to a feast prepared for them in the sky, then swindles them out of the food. The birds retaliate by stranding him in the sky. He asks two birds to bring his...