1 “Nothing but Pleasant Memories of the Discipline of Slavery”: The Trickster and the Dynamics of Racial Representation Emily Zobel Marshall Anansi the spider and Brer Rabbit are anarchic trickster figures of African origin who dominate the folktales of the Americas. Anansi, whose origins can be traced back to the Akan of Ghana in West Africa, is predominantly found in Anglophone Caribbean folktales while Brer Rabbit, who originated from the hare trickster figure of the Bantu-speaking peoples of South, Central and East Africa, is popular across the French-speaking Caribbean and USA (Zobel Marshall; Werner). In the Francophone Caribbean and American states, in particular Louisiana, the African hare became known as ‘Compère Lapin’, i while in the English- speaking USA he became Brer (brother) Rabbit. Brer Rabbit tales entered white American mainstream culture in the late nineteenth century through the Uncle Remus collections by American journalist Joel Chandler Harris. Harris, who collected the tales from black plantation workers, has been commended for keeping the folktales and alive and accurately recording African American vernacular. However, he has also been heavily criticized for supporting slavery and contributing to the creation of patronizing and damaging stereotypes that romanticize the antebellum era. Uncle Remus, a character of Harris’ invention, is a kindly, satisfied elderly slave who, Harris writes in his introduction to Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1880), has “nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery” and tells the Brer Rabbit stories for the entertainment of a little white boy (Harris in Chase xxvii). In a heated essay “Uncle Remus, No Friend of Mine” (1981), Alice Walker blamed Harris of stealing part of her heritage and making her “feel ashamed of it” (Walker 31). Through Harris’ collections of Uncle Remus stories, the popularity of the rabbit trickster grew, particularly amongst white Americans. In 1926,