Reviewed Work: Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas by José E. Limón

Abstract

Jose Limon has given us a meditation on the folklore of Mexican-Americans in south Texas and on its representation in scholarly works. Among the delights of this volume are encounters with a set of precursors, portraits of Mexican-Americans doing folklore today, and a narrative depicting the author's attempt to make sense of a folklore and a folkloristics with which he has intimate association. If the reader is obliged to wade through a few patches of trendy discourse, to suffer an occasional blast of polemics, and to disregard too many typos, the rewards are significant, for Limon has fashioned a compelling interpretation based on sensitive readings of fresh ethnographic data.