Metafolklore: Stories of Sino-US Folkloristic Communication, Volume 1, edited by Juwen Zhang and Junhua Song and published by Sun Yat-Sen University Press in 2017, is a readable, attractive, and valuable book that shows new approaches found in folklore studies publications. The essays collected in the book are generally short, mostly in memoir style, but they convey rich firsthand information regarding historic and recent developments in China-US folkloristic communications. Reading this book is an enjoyable experience, as the essays contain vivid stories from Chinese and American folklorists’ personal memorable experiences in participating in various China-US folkloristic scholarly exchanges, communications, and collaborative activities. It is the first book focusing on the topic of Sino-US folklore communication, and it is the first book systemically documenting the historical and recent development of cultural and scholarly communication between Chinese folkloristics and American folkloristics through a collection of folklorists’ personal narratives. As Michael Jones remarks in the preface, personal experience is intangible, so documenting these personal narratives has special value. The editor, Juwen Zhang, claims that this book enables folklorists’ personal stories about folklore studies to become an integral part of the folklore discipline. The term “metafolklore” is a good one for this book’s contents.
This book is a celebration of friendship, communication, collaboration, and mutual understanding between Chinese folklorists and American folklorists. It consists of a preface, prologue, epilogue, and thirty-two essays, grouped into four sections:
I. Glimpses of the Past and Memories of the Distinguished Predecessors;
II. From Face-to-text to Face-to-face—Cultivating Friendship;
III. From Folklore in Books back to Folklore in Practice—Opening up New Paths;
IV. From One-Way and Scattershot to Two-way and Institutionalized Communication—A New Norm of Academic Communication.
The four sections taken as a whole deliver to readers the important message of historical, progressive developments in the interaction of Sino-US folkloristics. Moreover, they show how individuals have played a role in this development through its different stages, from scattered to organized activity; from occasional to routine activity; from personal friendship and scholarly exchange between individual Chinese folklorists and American folklorists to institutionalized collaboration in a range of programs sponsored by the American Folklore Society and the Chinese Folklore Society; from learning about the other to learning about each other. There are stories of early predecessors like Ting Nai-Tong and Alan Dundes helping Chinese folklorists to know more about international folklore studies in the last century, leading to the most recent decade featuring formal collaboration between the AFS and the CFS to jointly undertake conferences, forums, museum projects, workshops, and publication projects. And there are many stories about US folklorists visiting China to attend conferences and conduct research there, as well as Chinese folklorists coming to spend time in the US. All these stories demonstrate the great benefits from such communication for advancing folkloristics in both countries through the exchange of theories and best practices, leading to a deepening understanding of each other. Folklorists’ personal experiences are obviously valuable firsthand data in the study of the communication of Sino-US folkloristics.
One significant development in this communication is that the Chinese folklore organization has become more active in promoting a more equal dialogue between Chinese and US folkloristics, after an earlier stage of translating American folklorists’ theory and inviting American folklorists to give lectures in China. These days members of these organizations go to the US to present their own work and participate in collaborative programs, such as Intangible Cultural Heritage forums, the collaboration of museums in the Quilts of Southwest China Project, and the annual American Folklore Society conference.
Metafolklore: Stories of Sino-US Folkloristic Communication demonstrates the value in promoting and celebrating such equal and mutual communication. The whole book is bilingual, in Chinese and English. A few of its authors point out that Chinese folklorists know and understand American folklore better than American folklorists know and understand Chinese folklore. One of the barriers causing this imbalance is language. This bilingual edition attempts to break down the language barrier and is especially helpful for American folklorists to know more about the field of Chinese folklore. However, creating a bilingual book is a challenge for the Chinese publisher, and there are a number of minor print errors in the English texts.
The ideal of equal communication can also be perceived in the contributors of the book, which includes both American and Chinese folklorists. Whether they are senior scholars, the leaders in the field, or junior scholars or recent graduates, they all share their viewpoints, feelings, and experiences. The stories from both Chinese folklorists and American folklorists reveal that this cross-cultural communication has brought them an international vision, has impacted local folklore studies, and has cultivated mutual respect and learning from one another.
While celebrating the unique accomplishment of this volume, a point of regret is that this single volume does not allow the inclusion of many other dedicated scholars to tell their stories, for example, Sue Tuohy at Indiana University who has been devoted to Sino-US folklore exchanges for many years. Another point of regret is that, while these stories are valuable as firsthand data, personal memories may have limits in terms of accuracy in detail. However, without doubt, this book is a grand pathbreaking work, opening a new pathway in the field of folklore studies. It casts light on a bright future of Sino-US folkloristic exchange, collaboration, and communication.
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[Review length: 885 words • Review posted on December 7, 2018]