Derived from African diasporic storytelling traditions and adapted in African American folklore, Brer Rabbit symbolises strategic survival under unequal power conditions. In poetry, the tradition may appear through irony, coded resistance, comic subversion, and clever underdog figures. The concept helps explain literary strategies where wit becomes defence, cultural intelligence becomes power, and survival depends upon linguistic agility rather than physical dominance.

The Brer Rabbit tradition, originating in West African folklore (particularly the Anansi spider tradition brought across the Middle Passage), found its most famous American literary expression through the stories recorded — and problematically filtered — by Joel Chandler Harris in the Uncle Remus tales, whose racism students must critically confront. The tradition itself, however, is a sophisticated vehicle for encoding survival strategies, communal wisdom, and critique of power under conditions where direct resistance was dangerous. Related terms include trickster tradition, signifyin, folkloric memory, and Black folk tradition. Julius Lester's retellings offer a corrective to Harris's framing. In poetry, Brer Rabbit appears as a touchstone for understanding how indirection and wit function as political tools.