Joel Chandler Harris
Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings
"Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings" by Joel Chandler Harris is a collection of African American folktales published in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Harris compiled traditional trickster tales featuring Br'er Rabbit and other animal characters, framing them through the fictional narrator Uncle Remus, a kindly freedman storyteller. Written in Harris's interpretation of Deep South Black dialect, these didactic stories have sparked ongoing controversy for their plantation setting and stylistic choices, even as they preserve oral folklore from Southern Black communities.