We Are All Survivors: Verbal, Ritual, and Material Ways of Narrating Disaster and Recovery addresses the role of folklore and folklorists in disaster recovery, and is in many ways a methodologically focused work. Not principally in the sense of offering neat, hands-on instructions, but rather in guiding us in how to think and reflect on our own practices. Showcasing the work of both US-based and Japanese scholars, the book provides cross-cultural insights while circling around issues such as empathy, tellability and untellability, listening, and the control over stories. It is a reprint of a Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies double issue, with two new chapters added. As Michael Dylan Foster states in the preface, the journal format is not always conducive to reading all the articles in conjunction, and hence the subtle dialogue between them is lost. This is a great pity, because this dialogue is well worth listening to, as this volume amply illustrates.
Carl Lindahl’s introductory chapter opens with some important questions, the most crucial of which is how we as folklorists should – and should not – respond to disasters affecting the communities we come into contact with. Thus, the different roles of the ethnographer constitute one of the overarching themes of the book, and Lindahl outlines the principles of his own project, Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston, which had survivors interview survivors to both document their experiences and promote healing. Just who is a survivor turned out to be a less evident matter: when Lindahl wanted to recruit Vietnamese-speaking survivors of Katrina as interviewers, he simultaneously turned down offers to engage other Vietnamese-speakers to do this work. The reply he received is very much food for thought, and also furnishes the title of the book, as they were all survivors, if not of Katrina, then of other disasters shared within the group. Lindahl explains that the aim of the interviews was to allow the participants to create a bond of “total trust,” and shared experiences were integral to this endeavor. In several passages, he returns to Rebecca Solnit’s expression “a paradise built in hell,” as telling their stories was a way of rebuilding that paradise built in hell and remembering the mutual assistance and deep sense of community that emerged as a result. Such stories, he argues, are the best antidote to the demonizing rumors and legends that tend to circulate during disasters, and it is our job as folklorists to help survivors broadcast them.
In chapter 2, Yutaka Suga discusses his experiences of working with survivors of the Chuetsu-Niigata Earthquake in the Higashiyama area of Ojiya City in 2004, and he describes the ill-ease with which he witnessed the activities of other researchers and experts, making him intent on contributing to the recovery of survivors in his own – folkloristic – way. The chapter is essentially a plea for empathy with survivors and a demonstration of how empathy should guide us in our encounters with disaster-affected communities. He outlines an unequal relationship between experts and disaster survivors, wherein the former purport to design recovery projects for the benefit of the latter, but instead use these projects as a means of generating revenue for themselves. In this area, there is a highly valued local tradition of bullfighting, and when the survivors broke free from reliance on outside experts, they took control over both their situation and this tradition. Bullfighting was recognized as an aid to recovery by outsiders as well, but without sharing respect for the values attached to it. The tradition is also challenged by external factors abiding in a modern logic, and Yutaka Suga has been involved in coping with these challenges, as one among the bullfighters.
In chapter 3, Yoko Taniguchi shares insights from her work among older adult survivors of the same earthquake discussed by Yutaka Suga, but this time from the rural mountain village of Yamakoshi. She raises an important point in questioning how long an area should be characterized as “disaster-stricken” and survivors be referred to as “victims,” based on what one of her interviewees said to her on this topic. When people have reached the stage of returning to their homes or establishing themselves in new locations, such labelling can give rise to discomfort. This created an incentive for her to voice her own motivations in conducting her interviews, stating that she wanted to disseminate the stories survivors told to others outside the community. At first, these stories revolved around mutual help, but later they centered more on people’s sense of belonging to their community. While the residents of Yamakoshi were displaced and lived elsewhere, wooden statues of the Buddhist saint Jizo, carved from an old cedar that fell in the earthquake, and planting their native green pepper (kagura nanban), proved crucial in maintaining their connections to their former homes. Taniguchi discusses ways of reconnecting to place for those who chose to leave, e.g., by still cultivating their lands, tending their ancestral graves, meeting old neighbors, and dancing, as well as the motivations for staying, such as a sense of obligation to the family. She also brings out the feelings of emptiness a return might engender, which she attributes to the great impact of the disaster experience.
The rescue of folkloric materials after the tsunami following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 is the subject of Koji Kato’s contribution. Writing about the Ishinomaki area, he details a project that he headed to clean and preserve the contents of the Ayukawa Repository, a cultural heritage collection that was in danger of being dispersed due to the disaster. He is also interested in the meanings attached to objects in the collection when they were exhibited to the local residents. In the modern period, Ayukawa was a whaling town. Kato describes how well-travelled men of the community brought home stuffed exotic birds and even penguins from their whaling expeditions, objects that were now testimony to the glocal lives lived in this area. Another example is the set of objects donated by a temple in Yagawa, a neighborhood that was virtually destroyed in the tsunami. Former residents wondered how these objects could possibly have meaning for anyone else, now that their community no longer existed and the objects were the sole physical remnant of the Yagawa that once was. Objects salvaged by locals on the shores posed ethical problems, as few stepped forward to claim them. Kato discusses the case of a lion-head mask employed for ritual performances, an object in search of meaning until it could be emplaced in a village close to Onagawa. In viewing the exhibition, locals used the objects to remember their past lives, not to narrate their experiences of the disaster, and one woman said that she had not spoken about the past at all since the tsunami because she no longer had access to the objects her memories were attached to.
In chapter 5, Kate Parker Horigan scrutinizes the position of the survivor-scholar, one she has herself occupied as survivor of Hurricane Katrina and student of Katrina narratives. She points out that the emotional aspects of this double positioning deserve greater attention than they have hitherto received, as they offer access to the embodied experiences of survivors and thus produce knowledge that is otherwise beyond the reach of outsiders. At the same time, this process is fraught with difficulties, not least of which is honoring both your own and others’ emotions. It is evident, judging by Horigan’s repeated resistance to the implicit celebration of “neutrality” as the proper stance for a scholar, that, despite our decades-long discussion of reflexivity, we have not progressed beyond surreptitiously privileging the outsider perspective as more conducive to “real” knowledge. She also highlights the significant contribution of folklorists’ valuation of the perspectives and experiences of lay persons, noting that we can use our professional platform to boost respect for their expertise and stories, especially when these are being excluded from public discourse or are being appropriated by others. Such appropriation tends to result in oversimplification and stereotyping, and Horigan concludes that when the tellers have not been allowed to negotiate the reception of their stories, complexity is correspondingly reduced, affecting the possibility of developing truly survivor-centered disaster responses.
In chapter 6, Amy Schuman problematizes the notion of empathy, suggesting that we should be content with simply listening, especially since we, as folklorists, understand the impact of the imbalances between tellers and listeners. Schuman identifies two challenges, one associated with the scholar and the possibilities of achieving understanding of cultural practices outside one’s own group, the other concerned with the potential untellability of the narrator’s experiences. She goes on to review conceptualizations of empathy in diverse fields, such as ethnographic research, trauma research, psychology, and disability studies, before landing in a treatment of empathy in literary fiction and in folklore studies. A common denominator in several of these fields is that empathy is not only framed as something positive; empathy (as understanding) can be used to harm others or relish their suffering, to impose unwanted pity or undesired admiration. Simultaneously, empathy is comprehended as necessary to a fundamental human connection, without which people can be utterly dehumanized. This points to the structural violence involved in severing that human connection. In closing the chapter, Schuman reminds us that we should refrain from imposing messages as listeners, even positive ones, in order to ensure that the narrator is in full control of the story.
The intangible lightness of heritage is the topic of chapter 7, written by Michael Dylan Foster. Behind this somewhat puzzling title lies a deep insight: that even in the most adverse circumstances, heritage can bring comfort to survivors of disasters, provided it is taken lightly enough, i.e., that it is allowed to change depending on the situation at hand. A vital point he makes is that heritage – in the form of rituals, festivals, and similar activities – may serve not only to give strength and hope to citizens, but also to furnish an already existing, functional community infrastructure that can be recruited to organize a shelter for survivors as well as to create a local religious festival. He labels this an “infrastructure of caring," taking his examples from Japan, most of them deriving from the Tohoku earthquake in 2011. As neither a survivor nor an ethnographer of the disaster, Foster relies on news reports to achieve empathy, but he does this very well, and it is obvious that his deep knowledge of Japanese culture is a prerequisite for his insightful readings of this material.
Gloria M. Colom Braña describes, in chapter 8, her experience of surviving Hurricane María in 2017. Arriving in her native Puerto Rico to do fieldwork on traditional housing for her doctoral dissertation, Colom Braña was caught in the deadliest hurricane to ever hit Puerto Rico. She chronicles the course of the hurricane from her own perspective, often highlighting the importance of traditional knowledge to handle emerging situations. For instance, she writes about an interview with her grandfather in which the signs of an approaching hurricane are discussed: the sky becoming lead grey with small light-grey clouds speeding beneath, a strong wind turning leaves upside down, and the smell of fish and brine far from the sea. A piece of traditional knowledge that helped them live through the hurricane’s aftermath was an ingenious way of doing laundry, using five-gallon paint tubs and plungers. Colom Braña also points to the informal circulation of information, such as word of “miraculous spots” with actual cell phone coverage and sites where water was distributed, and how important this was for survival. Her text is accompanied by drawings that bring the situations she describes to vibrant visual life.
The final chapter is a short piece by Georgia Ellie Dassler and Kate Parker Horigan on folklorists’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, based on Dassler’s M.A. thesis. Taking Lindahl’s question concerning the role of folklorists in disasters as a point of departure, Dassler and Parker discuss the issues emerging as folklorists adapt their work to new conditions during the pandemic, with cancelled performances, programs, and fieldwork. While many of these moved online and could find new audiences because of this, many people were not able to partake of them due to the digital divide, and sometimes those people were the ones needing them the most. It is evident that folklorists feel strongly about contributing to resilience and recovery, and that this can be done in many ways, ranging from simply listening and giving people a voice to knowing how to serve communities rather than swooping in as some kind of savior. Since the pandemic affected people’s emotional bandwidth, the consistent attention to their needs informed many folklore projects. Similarly, the effects of racism and classism became very tangible during the pandemic, and this functioned as an incentive for folklorists to renew their efforts to highlight and actively engage with racial and social inequities.
We Are All Survivors is thought-provoking and demonstrates the multifaceted contributions folklore studies can make to disaster management and recovery efforts. The ultimate message of the book, as I see it, is that we shouldn’t bring into this work too many assumptions. In chapter after chapter, expectations are foiled in one way or another. This is also why listening is so important, as it can help us transcend our own biases. While this may seem self-evident for a folklorist, it is not always easy to achieve in practice, making crucial this gentle but constant reminder. When we fail, we also need to be humble enough to change our minds, and in this respect, the authors in this volume are good role models. The constant discussion of the authors’ positionalities deals with another theme that may appear obvious, but in disasters it is particularly important to address and re-think positionalities, as they influence whether our efforts result in the empowerment of survivors, or in the opposite. Thus, the issues raised in this book are immensely important to continue debating in the years to come.
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[Review length: 2324 words • Review posted on March 11, 2024]