This week's seminar focused on Pamela Colman Smith's Annancy Stories, a series of African/Jamaican folktales published in 1899. Pamela Colman Smith was an author, illustrator, and publisher born to an American father and Jamaican mother. The Annancy stories is a transatlantic text unlike the other texts from previous weeks focuses on stories that originate outside of Britain. The Annancy stories originated in West Africa and were brought to Jamaica by enslaved Africans through the British slave trade. Colman Smith as the author, illustrator, and published gives her a sense of authority that is different from the other female authors we've studied this term. Her decision to recreate the stories in the original Jamaican patois is interesting as it allows the stories to retain an aspect of the original oral tradition that would be otherwise lost in translation through publishing with any other company. It is a complex attempt at cultural preservation but also cultural appreciation due to her lived experiences which give her a sense of credibility to these stories but is still debatable. Colman does shy away from aspects of Jamaican culture that would be otherwise looked down upon by the British; language and religion/spiritual practices that would be seen as backwards and unintelligent. I think Colman Smith's Annancy Stories are really important as the Caribbean is a diaspora where many groups of people who were brought there lost many aspects of the culture from where they originated. The Annancy Stories connect Afro-Jamaicans to their African heritage through the continual retelling of these stories both in the written word through publishing companies and orally by parents and grandparents to their children, I think Colman's intentions were well-natured because these stories give representation, however, it raises the question of the actual Jamaican voices (that were descended from enslaved peoples) were lost when Colman decided to tell these stories herself, as her own racial identity is ambiguous. I strongly believe that BIPOC should have the sole right to tell stories that are specific to their heritage and ancestry in a space that is just for them.