Trickster: Native American Tales: 06/20/15

Trickster: Native American Tales edited by Matt Dembicki is an anthology of supposed Native American trickster tales, each illustrated as comics. Whether they are inspired by, or are retellings of, actual Native American tales is left to the reader to discern.

Trickster tales are certainly a part of Native American and American folklore. As I'm a west coast resident, I'm most familiar with the tales from the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. The tricksters from here are typically the Raven, Crow, or the Coyote. Tricksters are used to explain the oddities of nature. For the cultures I'm familiar with, the Trickster tales are associated with creation stories. But my knowledge of these tales is limited and lacking a full cultural grounding as my cultural foundation is that of a British and Northern European, multigenerational American mutt.

So, what I was hoping to see from this book was a way to expand my knowledge of trickster stories, especially beyond the few tribes / nations I am already familiar with. This book has twenty stories and an afterword with brief biographies of the authors and illustrators. But it doesn't have any sort of introductory information or source material for the stories.

And so while the stories are entertaining, they aren't educational.

Three stars

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