Welcome to Legba and The Signifying Monkey

I am a senior at Eastern Michigan University. My majors are Communication Disorders, and English, Language, and Writing. My minor is Gerontology. As part of my senior capstone project we were required to do a multi-genre project. Over the time I have been at EMU, I have had several interesting literature, linguistic, and sociology courses that have lead me to become interested in the oral tradition, storytelling, and folktales. For my project I wanted to research the connection of the trickser figure of Esu-Elegba from the Afro-Caribbean religion and mythology and the Signifying Monkey, a trickser of African American folktales. I also wanted to learn more about how tricksters are represented and operate in popular culture today. As one of the genres in my project, I am creating a blog to document my resources, bibliography, link to Internet resources, to share what I am learning, and hopefully to get feedback from the others about these topics. Another part of the project was a critical essay and I was directed to look at and write about Ishmael Reed's novel, Mumbo Jumbo. This part of the project lead me to research Voudun and Hoodoo, as well as Reed's Neo-Hoodoo Aesthetic. I welcome your comments and direction, this will be a project that will hopefully continue to grow long after I've graduated from EMU.