ABSTRACT
Once a crucial figure in the Akan and Ashanti cultures of West Africa, then popular primarily with schoolchildren in West Africa and the Anglophone Caribbean, Anansi the Spider 1 has made a strong comeback by crossing over into contemporary speculative fiction for adults. While this trickster figure is still a common subject for children’s books and theater in the Caribbean and North America (projects from the past 15 years include the annually produced and award-winning Chaptaz of Anancy in Jamaica, Paul Mesner Puppets performances in Kansas City, Missouri, an annual Anancy Festival in Florida and Jamaica; picture books by Richardo Keens-Douglas [published in Canada] and Eric Kimmel [published in the U.S.]), in this essay, I focus on writing for adults – particularly the ways that the character represents fluidity and transgression not only in his moral code, which is emblematic of all tricksters, and in his biological makeup, a composite of human and arachnid, but in his recent appeal to the women writers who remove him from the realm of the masculine and re-imbibe him with gender bending qualities.
