Pittsford’s Stephen Belcher brings African mythology to America

By STEVEN JUPITER

PITTSFORD RESIDENT AND scholar of African mythology, Stephen Belcher spent years in Africa as a child and returned with the Peace Corps after obtaining a PhD in the late 1980s.

PITTSFORD—Americans may be familiar with Greek mythology—the exploits of Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, and the rest of the Olympians—but our knowledge of the mythology of the rest of the world tends to be spotty at best. Maybe a smattering of Norse or Native American, but that’s about it. The rest of the world’s folklore is all but unknown.

Pittsford’s Stephen Belcher, however, is deeply knowledgeable about African mythology. In fact, he’s published several collections of African myths and a novel based on his passion for them.

Belcher first came into contact with African culture when he was a child in the 1950s. His father was a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service and the family moved all around the African continent: Egypt, Nigeria, Benin, Tanzania.

“It was in Benin that I began getting into African culture,” said Belcher in a recent conversation. “The country was still largely undeveloped and there was a lot of traditional stuff. I remember fishermen in massive canoes coming back from sea with sharks. There was a throne in the royal palace that sat upon four human skulls. You could see echoes of pre-colonial culture all around.”

At the time, the young Belcher had no idea he’d devote his career to the culture he was witnessing firsthand. Instead, as he grew up and started college, his academic interests were in medieval Europe. He was a huge fan of Tolkien and the “Lord of the Rings” series of books, for example. He obtained a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University thinking that his academic future lay in medievalism. 

“I wanted to study Norse mythology and Old English,” he said. The study of oral literature was quite trendy in academia at the time, with much focus on sagas like “Beowulf.” 

DR. BELCHER PUBLISHED this collection in 2005. It contains 71 myths from all over the African continent.

“I said, ‘You know, there’s a whole continent where oral stories are still being performed…’” Belcher recalled. Soon, he found himself writing a dissertation comparing African and French epics. The horse had left the barn, so to speak, and Belcher’s career was heavily involved with African myth from that point forward. He even went back to Africa to serve in the Peace Corps in the late 1980s.

He continued collecting myths from different African cultures for years, always trying to track down the earliest known versions of each. Many of the myths were available only as transcribed by European colonists, since much of the continent didn’t have systems of writing to record their stories themselves. Belcher gathered and retold over 70 of them in his book “African Myths of Origin,” published by Penguin Classics in 2005.

The collection has two parts. Part I organizes 19 of the myths by theme: hunters, cattle-herders, and tricksters. Part II organizes 52 of the myths by region/culture: ancient Africa, Upper Nile, Central East Africa, Sahara, Senegambia, to list just a few. 

Like the European myths we’re more familiar with, African myths interpret the world around us through stories that combine the mundane and the fantastical. A striking difference, however, is that the world they’re interpreting is markedly dissimilar from the one that Europeans found themselves in. The landscapes are different, the local plants and animals are different, but the broad strokes of human nature are the same. Anyone who enjoys European mythology will enjoy these stories. In some ways, they’re like hearing a beloved Beethoven symphony played on instruments you’ve never heard before. And in the process of reading these African myths, we learn about cultures we Americans generally know little about.

DR. BELCHER PUBLISHED this novel in 2021 and drew inspiration for it from African mythology and medievalist quests like “Lord of the Rings.”

In 2021, Belcher published a novel, “The Golden Secret of Kri Koro,” in which he used his extensive knowledge of African culture, geography, and mythology to tell a story of his own. The book is set in the early days of French colonial rule in the African nations of Mali and Guinea and follows a Bamana peasant boy in his quest to aid an ancient princess who’s stuck in a thousand-year-old limbo. Belcher’s lifelong love of Tolkien comes through in his use of the ancient and the supernatural to tell a story of an unlikely hero. It’s a medieval quest set in colonial Africa.

“I wanted to write an adventure story with an African hero,” said Belcher, adding that the novel is based on decades of study and knowledge of Africa. He’s one-third of the way into a sequel and he hopes eventually to turn the project into a trilogy.

If you’re interested in mythology and would like to expand your knowledge base beyond the Greeks and Romans, Belcher’s books are a great way to do so. Both books mentioned in this piece are available on Amazon and “The Golden Secret of Kri Koro” is also available through its publisher, Van Velzer Press of Pittsford.

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