Annie Christmas
Annie Christmasorflatboat Annie[1]is a character in the folklore andtall talesof Louisiana, described as a 7 feet (2.1 m) tall, supernaturally strongAfrican-Americanwomankeelboatcaptain. She has been described as a female counterpart of theJohn Henrycharacter, another supernaturally strong African American folklore character. Like John Henry, the character may have been based on a real person. Stories of Annie Christmas have been included in several collections of folktales from theSouthern United States.[2][3][4][5][6]
In his book "The Gangs of New Orleans",Herbert Asburystates that Annie Christmas was originally a white New Orleans woman and white folk hero, who “became a demigod among the Negroes” who presented her as black. He writes that “In the white version of the Annie Christmas saga, she was murdered in a New Orleans gambling-house, but Negro tradition permits no such commonplace end. The Negroes have it that she killed herself for love.”[7]
The stories describe how she defies traditional gender hierarchies and the rules and expectations for female behavior. She drinks exorbitant amounts of liquor and dominates men who challenge her authority. She wears a pearl necklace, and each pearl represents the defeat of someone who has unsuccessfully challenged her. Though unmarried, she has twelve sons who work as her crewmen on the keelboat.[8][9][10]In one tale of her death she was attacked by 100 men who shot and stabbed her.[11][12]
The novel1993: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasantby Jamaican AuthorMichelle Cliffincludes a character named Annie Christmas, probably inspired by the folktale character.[13]
Andrew Lloyd WebberandJim Steinmanwrote an Annie Christmas song for their playWhistle Down the Wind(1996).
References
[edit]- ^Janet P. Johnson (author) and Charles Reasoner (illustrator) (1998).Keelboat Annie: an African-American Legend.Mahwah, NJ: Troll.ISBN978-0816743476.OCLC38472422
- ^Benjamin Albert Botkin. 1976. A treasury of Southern folklore: stories, ballads, traditions, and folkways of the people of the South. Edited with an Introd. by B. A. Botkin. With a foreword by Douglas Southall Freeman. Crown.
- ^A treasury of North American folktales.Book-of-the-Month Club, 1998
- ^Virginia Hamilton. 1995.Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales.Scholastic Inc., 1995
- ^Bradford, M. R. "The Story of Annie Christmas".A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore,35–36.
- ^Creany, A. D. (2007).Heroines in North American folklore.ETEN 17, 117.
- ^Herbert Asbury. 2004.The Gangs of New Orleans.Random House. London. pp. 82–83.
- ^LaMonda Horton-Stallings. 2007.Mutha' is half a word: intersections of folklore, vernacular, myth, and queerness in black female culture.Ohio State University Press
- ^"Annie Christmas – Tall Tale Heroes".talltalehero.weebly.Retrieved2017-04-13.
- ^J. Suter, Globe Fearon. 1992.World Myths and Legends: Regional American.Pearson Prentice Hall, p. 31
- ^Jay Robert Nash. 1990.Encyclopedia of World Crime: A–C.Chromebooks, 1990
- ^Stephanie Athey. 2003.Sharpened Edge: Women of Color, Resistance, and Writing.Praeger, 2003
- ^Willis, Charlotte. 2007.Rene. Myth and Memory: Reconstructing the feminine in Caribbean-American fiction.Texas Christian University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2007. 1441422.
Further reading
[edit]- Emile Carter Cook and Barbara Smetz (1974).Annie Christmas: Lady Longshoreman.Society for Visual Education (juvenile picture book with music and narration).OCLC5609896
- William Conrad(narrator) and Davie Krebs (producer) (1956).Annie Christmas.Pacifica RadioArchiveOCLC947288282
- Available via YouTube as"The Legend of Annie Christmas"– replay of theCBS Radio Workshopepisode (30 minutes)