Anpao

Anpao	Scholastic
Written by Jamake Highwater	1991
Traditional Fiction	235 pages
Reading Level age 12-14	Newberry Award

Summary

Anpao is in love with a woman, KoKomikeis. She belongs to the sun and asks him to go to the house of the sun to ask for her hand. He sets off on his journey. He meets a swan who tells him his heritage that he has forgotten. The Old man created everything, first the water, the sea animals then the land and lastly human. One of the early women asked why there was no death. Old man answered in killing her baby son. She is bereft. She walks for days in her grief, trying to find the Old man to bring back her son. She sits at a lake where the Sun sees her and takes her to his home above the earth. The moon, wife of the sun, hates the woman and stays on the dark side, planning how to get the sun back.The woman is happy and has another son, Anpao. She sees her village far below and weaves a long rope to return to her family. She tries to climb down her twisted rope, but didn’t make it long enough. She can’t untie Anpao, fearing he would fall and was too tired to climb back up again. When the sun returned, he was angry at her for trying to escape. He kills her and Anpao falls to the ground. He is raised by an old Grandmother until he begins to travel to other villages. The swan concludes her tale by giving him advice and wisdom on his journey to the sun’s house. He finally makes it there after many hard days’ journey. He is met by the Moon, who doesn’t recognize him and takes him into the house. Anpao, warned of her anger against his mother introduces himself as Scarface. He meets his step brother, Morning Star. They become fast friends and explore the land surrounding. One day, they venture to the other side of the lake, where the moon warned them not to go. She said there were large birds that would kill any son of the sun. They were soon attacked and Anpao fought them off bravely and saved Morning Star. The sun is told that night and adopts Anpao into his family. The sun did this so if ever the moon did find out who Anpao truly was, she would have reason not to hurt him. The sun agrees for Anpao to marry KoKomikeis and gives him a horse to ride and a shortcut back to her village. Along the way, Anpao meets a man with smallpox who destroyed several villages in his path. Anpao becomes worried and hurries to the village. KoKomikeis is happy he has returned, for the village had begun to taunt her thinking he was dead and would never return. They are married immediately with a celebration. Anpao tries to warn the village of the destruction slowly coming, but they scoff and jeer at him. KoKokmikeis believes him and they escape through the river and are spared from death.

Reaction

I had a difficult time reading this. One reason was I didn’t know where an animal was an animal or a title of a person, because there were times when an animal was speaking that had traits of a human, without distinction from a human with an animal title. This story was interesting and I could relate it to many similarities from my own culture and tried to understand the differences.

Potential Problems

There are scenes that are hard to understand and confusing at times. There was a part where a human was cursed and turned into a large water snake because he ate eggs that were considered sacred. Anpao also had two parts of himself that had to be fused together after he was split by a ring of wood falling from the sky.

Recommendations

I would recommend this to students who are interested in creation stories and traditional folktales. This was compiled from a many oral stories told throughout the generations and contain many different aspects of the earth’s history and its’ beginning.