This remarkable collection of eight essays offers a rare perspective on the issue of cross-cultural communication. Greg Sarris is concerned with American Indian texts, both oral and written, as well as with other American Indian cultural phenomena such as basketry and religion. His essays cover a range of topics that include orality, art, literary criticism, and pedagogy, and demonstrate that people can see more than just "what things seem to be." Throughout, he asks: How can we read across cultures so as to encourage communication rather than to close it down? Sarris maintains that cultural practices can be understood only in their living, changing contexts. Central to his approach is an understanding of storytelling, a practice that embodies all the indeterminateness, structural looseness, multivalence, and richness of culture itself. He describes encounters between his Indian aunts and Euro-American students and the challenge of reading in a reservation classroom; he brings the reports of earlier ethnographers out of museums into the light of contemporary literary and anthropological theory. Sarris's perspective is exceptional: son of a Coast Miwok/Pomo father and a Jewish mother, he was raised by Mabel McKay—a renowned Cache Creek Pomo basketweaver and medicine woman—and by others, Indian and non-Indian, in Santa Rosa, California. Educated at Stanford, he is now a university professor and recently became Chairman of the Federated Coast Miwok tribe. His own story is woven into these essays and provides valuable insights for anyone interested in cross-cultural communication, including educators, theorists of language and culture, and general readers.

Never Try to Teach a Pig to Sing documents the thriving folklore tradition that circulates in the workplace. Alan Dundes and Carl Pagter have collected more than two hundred and fifty "signs of the times"--the office memoranda, parodies, cartoons, and poems that daily make their way through copy machines, interoffice mail systems, and fax machines and are affixed to bulletin boards and water coolers. The rich vein of urban folklore tapped by this imaginative volume constitutes a great testament to one of the world's most prolific authors--anonymous. The popularity of the items featured in this timely book is apparent by their reproduction in mass or popular cultural form--as greeting cards, plaques, and bumper stickers--reminding us of the inevitable interplay between folklore and mass culture. Dundes and Pagter clearly demonstrate the existence of folklore in the modern urban technological world and refute the notion that folklore reflects only the past.

First published in English 1960. The historical value of Hertz's writings is that they are a representative example of the culmination of two centuries of development of sociological thought in France, from Montesquieu to Durkheim and his pupils. In the intervening years since publication, that development has grown into the systematic comparative study of primitive institutions, based on a great body of ethnographic facts from all over the world: in effect social anthropology.

Ten traditional Jewish folktales are retold, illustrated, and followed by questions for discussion

The nearly 300 stories in this lovely volume are from Sephardic oral literature and ethnic culture. They were told in their original language, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), and documented over 21 years. From 17 countries, including the United States, they come together in this first-ever collection of Joha stories to appear in English.

Reimagining the Bible collects a dozen essays by Howard Schwartz. Together the essays present a coherent theory of the way in which each successive phase of Jewish literature has drawn upon and reimagined the previous ones. The book is organized into four sections: The Ancient Models; The Folk Tradition; Mythic Echoes; Modern Jewish Literature and the Ancient Models. Within these divisions, each of the essays focuses on a specific genre, ranging from Torah and Aggadah to Kabbalah, fairy tales, and the modern Yiddish stories of S.Y. Agnon and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Arguing the important thesis that there is a continuity in Jewish literature which extends from the Biblical era to our own times, over a period of more than 3,000 years, this collection also serves as a guide to the history of that literature, and to the genres it comprises.

In this lively and intellectually engaging book, Galit Hasan-Rokem shows that religion is shaped not only in the halls of theological disputation and institutions of divine study, but also in ordinary events of everyday life. Common aspects of human relations offer a major source for the symbols of religious texts and rituals of late antique Judaism as well as its partner in narrative dialogues, early Christianity, Hasan-Rokem argues. Focusing on the "neighborhood" of the Galilee that is the birthplace of many major religious and cultural developments, this book brings to life the riddles, parables, and folktales passed down in Rabbinic stories from the first half of the first millennium of the Common Era.

A skeptical visitor to the village of Nemirov finds out where its rabbi really goes during the Jewish New Year, when the villagers claim he goes to heaven to speak to God.

Office copier folklore?those tattered sheets of cartoons, mottoes, zany poems, defiant sayings, parodies, and crude jokes that regularly circulate in office buildings everywhere?is the subject of this innovative study. this type of folklore represents a major form of tradition in modern America, and the authors have compiled this raw data for scholarship?and entertainment. These creations of the Paperwork Empire comment on topics and problems that concern all urban Americans. No one and nothing escapes their raunchy wit and sarcasm. Bosses, ethnic groups, minorities, the sexes, alternative lifestyles, politics, welfare, government workers, the law, bureaucracy, and even "The Night Before Christmas" all come under fire to form a biting, and hilarious, commentary on modern American society.

Concentrating on lore gathered since World War II, Bronner has assembled an anthology of what children really say, not what adults wish they would say. It is through such shared lore—songs, expressions, games and beliefs—that children adapt to new situations. Bronner includes secret languages, jump rope rhymes, song parodies, games, taunts, tongue twisters, jokes, and more. These treasures make for nostalgic reading for adults who want to relive their own childhoods or gain a window to their own children's world.

In this illuminating discussion of the role of animals in Western thought, the author shows, through his analysis of folklore, popular ideas, and natural history, that man's traditional fascination with animals is more than it appears. Professor Sax asserts that "animals put us in touch with modes of perception that are prior to culture. Encounters with animals compel us to question what it means to be human." After summarizing recent research on the bonds between animals and people, the author discusses the two major traditions of animal tales in Western culture, fables and fairy tales. Also discussed is what role specific animals, such as the beaver, stag, and elephant, have played in Western thought.

Orality has been central to the transmission of Sephardic customs, wisdom, and values for centuries. Throughout the Middle Ages, Spanish Jews were known for their linguistic skills, and as translators and storytellers they were the main transmitters of Eastern/Islamic culture to the Christian world. Derived from a distinguished heritage, Judeo-Spanish storytelling has evolved over a five-hundred-year historical journey. Constant contact with the surrounding societies of the past and with modern Israeli influences, making it more universal than other Sephardic oral genres. Told in order to entertain but also to teach, Judeo-Spanish folktales convey timeless wisdom and a colorful depiction of Sephardic communities up to the first half of the twentieth century. King Solomon and the Golden Fish is a selection of fifty-four folktales taken from Matilda Koén-Sarano's collection of stories recorded in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and translated by Reginetta Haboucha into fluent and idiomatic English that preserves the flavor and oral nuances of each text. Haboucha provides commentary and annotations to the folktales that enlighten both the academic and the lay reader, making this book at once appealing to scholars and enjoyable for the general public. King Solomon and the Golden Fish is divided into six main thematic sections: Supernatural Tales, Tales of Fate, Tales of the Prophet Elijah, Romantic Tales, Tales of Cleverness and Wisdom, and Jokes and Anecdotes. These folktales remain a powerful link between modern-day Spanish Jews and the Hispano-Jewish legacy?this collection passes along that legacy and provides a source of the customs and values of Sephardic Jews.

Once upon a time, a young girl ventured into a dark forest, looking for a cure for her much-loved elder sister ... A touching, tender and lyrical fable about what we do for the ones we love, and the beauty and mystery of being alive in a world in which we are part of everything, and everything is part of us. As a terrible pandemic rages through the country, a young girl, Teo, leaves her small village and sets off into the forest, in search of a cure for her sister who is infected with the pox. Her father Merdocai has surrendered himself to the evil Marquis to be experimented upon for the Greater Good; and with her mother long-dead, all Teo has to keep her going is the love of her sister, her father and her friend Rodrigo, a stuttering poet. As Teo ventures deeper into the forest, she encounters creatures and teachers who hold the answers to all the questions she has about who she is, and where she has come from. Meanwhile, out in the depths of the ocean, a whale is returning to the place he was born, to exhale his last breath. While Teo does not know this, he too holds secrets that belong to Teo's story. The Whale's Last Song is a tender, sweet and wise fable, on what we are prepared to do for those we love; a celebration of the beauty and mystery of being alive in a world in which we are part of everything, and everything is part of us; and a love song to the natural world. It is The Alchemist meets The Princess Bride meets The Little Prince. It is a little gem. 'A bright ode to all that is good and beautiful in the world. The Whale's Last Song is a timeless tale, an allegory of the heart.' Maggie Hamilton 'Fresh, exquisite, a creative tour de force ... Both challenging and reassuring, the story weaves a sense of belonging through the fallibility of being human and the mysteries of being alive.' Suzie Miller, Prima Facie

"It is said that Coyote was sitting atop Sonoma Mountain when he decided to create the world and people, and many of the songs that Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people have sung since the beginning of time are gifts from the mountain. The stories go on and on because the mountain itself has so many things--rocks and animals; birds and grasses, fish, frogs, springs and creek, trees--and many of the stories connect with other stories, just as the animals and plants and all other things on Sonoma Mountain connect with one another. In this book of stories from the award-winning author of Grand Avenue, Greg Sarris retells sixteen creation stories from his ancestral homeland."--Provided by publisher.

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; The Maurice Amado Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Tales from Arab Lands presents tales from North Africa, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the latest volume of the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. This is the third book in the multi-volume series in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg?s timeless classic, Legends of the Jews . The tales here and the others in this series have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in Honor of Dov Noy, at The University of Haifa, a treasure house of Jewish lore that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust, migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation of these tales impossible. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition.

A language carries a people's memories, whether they are recounted as individual reminiscences, as communal history, or as humorous tales. This collection of stories from Anishinaabe elders offers a history of a people at the same time that it seeks to preserve the language of that people.> As fluent speakers of Ojibwe grow older, the community questions whether younger speakers know the language well enough to pass it on to the next generation. Young and old alike are making widespread efforts to preserve the Ojibwe language, and, as part of this campaign, Anton Treuer has collected stories from Anishinaabe elders living at Leech Lake, White Earth, Mille Lacs, Red Lake, and St. Croix reservations. Based on interviews Treuer conducted with ten elders—Archie Mosay, Jim Clark, Melvin Eagle, Joe Auginaush, Collins Oakgrove, Emma Fisher, Scott Headbird, Susan Jackson, Hartley White, and Porky White—this anthology presents the elders' stories transcribed in Ojibwe with English translation on facing pages. These stories contain a wealth of information, including oral histories of the Anishinaabe people and personal reminiscences, educational tales, and humorous anecdotes. Treuer's translations of these stories preserve the speakers' personalities, allowing their voices to emerge from the page. This dual-language text will prove instructive for those interested in Ojibwe language and culture, while the stories themselves offer the gift of a living language and the history of a people.

Take this test. You think today's sensitive, caring man is: (a) a myth, (b) an oxymoron, or (c) a moron. No matter whether you laugh at this bit of folk humor, its wide circulation bespeaks a modern predicament for American men. Men's manly traditions have been shaken in an age of sensitivity. Some observers have even referred to a crisis of masculinity for a new generation of boys. In Manly Traditions, established scholars in the fields of folklore, men's studies, and gender studies identify the folkloric roots of what it means to be a man in America. In a lively volume they examine the traditions men inherit and adapt for their own purposes in contemporary life. Simon J. Bronner is Distinguished University Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg.