Caitlyn Hunter is interested in folktales and she discussed that fact along with her new book “Power in the Tongue” during a virtual lecture March 20 at Historic Sotterley.
The discussion kicked off the Hollywood plantation museum’s annual People & Perspectives Series.
“I grew up reading Greek mythology and dreaming of heroines and minotaurs and gorgons, but then my mother got me a book called ‘The People Who Could Fly,’” said Hunter, who is an assistant professor of English at the College of Southern Maryland. “It was a book where the heroes of the story weren’t white, juxtaposed with ‘Ariel and the Little Mermaid,’ and now we have a new Black mermaid that’s controversial so I have to wonder, ‘How many other stories, fables and tales could in fact be Black, too?’”
She said she uses folktales as a away of being a type of living document.
“We all have different ideas of what we define as document. For some it’s photographs. It could be the archive of your Instagram or SnapChat stories. It could be that cute selfie you saved on your phone for a later date or holiday cards. It could be ticket stubs or favorite concerts or movies that you’ve gone to,” she said. “A document is just something we have to capture the moment and however you do that or define it is your prerogative. For me as an artist, my creative work is my document. It’s my attempt to archive facets of my life that I deem important.”
Hunter also read several of the book’s 160 pages, which a news release said, “fuses history and folktales to show Black perseverance across centuries” and that the book is a “hybrid of memoir and fiction which digs into the history of herself and her audience to show that the stories we tell are just as important as the facts.”
“There was a time long ago when African people could fly,” she read from a chapter titled Fo Kuro Fun Ominira. “They had magic. It was old magic where they could sing and turn into birds and soar high above the trees. But their enemies had nets. When they were captured and brought across the sea, their captors clipped their wings, stole their jewelry, and instead gave them shackles.”
Hunter also spoke of her ancestors, some of whom were enslaved. She showed an appraisal list for her great-great-great grandfather Davis Coles, who was appraised for $350, while his son Wilson was appraised $1,000.
“There is a reluctance in my family to talk about the darker shadows of our history,” she said. “It is easier to turn a blind eye than face uglier truths.”
Hunter said her elderly aunt was the inspiration for the book.
“She started telling me stories and the way she would do it is drop these little truth bombs,” said Hunter, who added she taped each conversation. “I realized that there was so much of my family history that nobody knew except for this 98-year-old woman.”
“It’s really important work that mixes oral histories with your traditional historical memories,” Historic Sotterley Executive Director Nancy Easterling said.
Hunter was the inaugural Emerging Black Artist in Residence at Chatham University in 2021-2022 and is a doctoral candidate at Duquesne University where she researches African American literature and Black food studies. She is currently writing both a collection of short stories and a culinary memoir around her maternal ancestry. Her work appears in “Midnight & Indigo,” “Lost Balloon” and elsewhere.
For more information about the book, go to www.caitlynhunter.com/books. For more information about other Historic Sotterley events, go to www.sotterley.org.
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