The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

Virginia Hamilton is the author of The People Could Fly, but she didn’t create the stories. Almost all of them are a product of people telling them to other people—they have no single author. Do what Hamilton does and pick a story and retell it. Think of how you can add your own mark on it without detracting from its meaning or lineage.

Read Hamilton’s first novel, Zeely (1967); The Planet of Junior Brown (1971); or another book she’s written and connect the folktales to her work. How do her stories spotlight teamwork, community, the supernatural, and so on?

Hamilton divided the book into four parts. Choose a story for each part and think of a thread that connects them. Use passages from the text to support your argument.