27. Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl by Virginia Hamilton

 27. Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl by Virginia Hamilton

Hamilton, V. (2003). Bruh Rabbit and the tar baby girl. NY: The Blue Sky Press.

This is a retelling, using Gullah speech, of the story about the character Bruh Rabbit and his attempts to outwit Bruh Wolf. Bruh Wolf plants corn to prepare for winter, but the “tricky-some” Bruh Rabbit didn’t do anything to prepare. All that winter Bruh Rabbit stole corn and peanuts Bruh Wolf discovers this and makes a scarecrow to try and frighten Bruh Rabbit to stay out of his fields. That night, Bruh Rabbit discovers the scarecrow is nothing but a bundle of old rags and kicks it over, fills his sacks with peanuts, and runs home to his place in the briar bush. The next day, Bruh Wolf discovers his plan didn’t work.  He decides to make a baby girl rabbit out of tar to get Bruh Rabbit. That night, the Rabbit sees the tar baby girl and tries to knock her down but gets stuck.  Wolf came out the next morning and found Bruh Rabbit stuck to the tar baby girl.  He pulls Rabbit off and declares he will eat him.  Rabbit, being the trickster he is, says “roast me and toast me; cut me up and eat me, but don’t throw me in the briar bush!” Of course, that is what Wolf does, and Rabbit laughs at him saying, “this is my home Wolf, you are foolish; you will never catch me again!”

 The story is not only an entertaining trickster folktale for children but also an insightful glimpse into the history, psychology, and folklore of plantation slaves. The clever rabbit is a persona for the black slave.  The physically inferior rabbit outwits the strong, slower, more stupid animals, such as Bruh Wolf.  These stories about Bruh Rabbit could be used in the classroom for teaching folk tales.  They would be better suited for older children, probably 5th grade and above.  These books would be excellent to use in a high school history class when teaching about slavery.  They give students a look into how the slaves related to a character like Bruh Rabbit. I came across several sources that discussed how the characters and slaves compared.  When researching, I found many papers written on the parallels of the characters in these books parallel the relationship between slaves and whites in the pre-Civil War south.

I am including a link to an article written by Nina Martyris called 'Tar Baby': A Folk Tale About Food Rights, Rooted in The Inequalities of Slavery.  It discusses the views of a Berkeley professor named Bryan Wagner and his book The Tar Baby, A Global History.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/11/527459106/tar-baby-a-folktale-about-food-rights-rooted-in-the-inequalities-of-slavery



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