Enslaved griots were the originators of the tales of Bre’r Rabbit, sharing adapted West African fables after long days working. "This is Black history," says one historian.

As noted in my book, American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition, and Brer Rabbit, there are only two detailed pieces of research connecting Potter’s tales with Harris’s earlier folktales.

Wherever the trickster appears—in myths or movies, in dreams or fairy tales—the effect is a wildly destabilizing but ultimately beneficial shift of conscious awareness.

From apartheid South Africa to North Korea to the stage of the New York City Ballet, the characters in these three new books imagine themselves in lives other than their own.