Editor William Schneider, an oral historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, opens Living with Stories with an introduction of the development of oral history from the 1940s “great men’s history” to the contemporary “every person’s history” approach (chapter 1). He credits anthropological and folkloristic input for this democratization of a historical methodology, particularly the work of Canadian anthropologist Julie Cruikshank whose work with Tlingit and Tagish elders in the Yukon revealed “the social life of stories” for him, and so became the basis for this book.
Schneider introduces the six following chapters, written by an anthropologist, folklorist, or historian, each of which includes the author’s “conversation with” a noted scholar drawn from discussions conducted by the editor. Anthropologist Holly Cusack-McVeigh examines multiple tellings of a Yup’ik mythic story, conversing with anthropologist Klara B. Kelly (chapter 2). Anthropologist Aron L. Crowell and Yupik elder Estelle Oozevaseuk present contrasting European and native narratives concerning a famine and epidemic that killed over half the Yupik population on St. Lawrence Island in 1878–80, conversing with historian of anthropology James Clifford (chapter 3). Anthropologist and folklorist Kirin Narayan discusses her work on Kashmiri women’s wedding songs, and the impact of her reintroducing versions she’d taped earlier, conversing with folklorist Barre Toelken (chapter 4). Folklorist Joanne B. Mulcahy examines the story repertoire of Mexican-American artist Eva Castellanoz to find the Tree of Life emerging as metaphor, conversing with anthropologist Barbara A. Babcock (chapter 5). Historian Sherna Berger Gluck examines different versions of Palestinian women’s accounts of the evolving women’s movement, conversing with anthropologist Ted Swedenburg (chapter 6). Historian Lorraine McConaghy reports on a theatre project at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry that involves museum visitors performing selected oral histories of earlier Seattle residents, conversing with historian Karen R. Utz (chapter 7). Schneider concludes the book with a general afterword (chapter 8).
Schneider states in his introduction: “The title of this book, Living with Stories, emphasizes our common belief that to really understand a story, we need to listen to how it is used and recognize how each new narration bears the mark of the present and a particular reason for telling. This is not new information to scholars of oral narrative…” (1). As a folklorist interested in story, particularly legend, I agree that, yes, this is not new information. Twice-told tales, variations in tale telling, and contextual modifications of stories have long been staples in folk narrative study, morphing through various methodological and theoretical perspectives over the years. But Schneider continues, “…but our focus on retellings provides a new and appropriate frame for asking about individual stories and how they are used over time” (1). He then outlines three goals he hopes that the volume will achieve by zeroing in on retellings: “(1) expand appreciation for how people create and convey meaning through stories; (2) demonstrate how context and audience play out in a variety of different case studies of retellings in different cultural settings where different values, beliefs and practices influence the story and how it is told; and (3) use our focus on retelling to explore how stories are keys to how and what we remember” (2).
I suggest that, yes, these goals have been met, and I am persuaded that this book is news, subtle but evocative. Although the summary of the chapters given above hints at the richness of the authors’ varied interpretations of “retelling,” given space limitations here, one extended example will support this evaluation. Crowell and Oozevaseuk’s chapter, “The St. Lawrence Island Famine and Epidemic, 1878–80: A Yupik Narrative in Cultural and Historical Context,” deals most clearly with a historic event, and does contrast European and Yupik narrative versions of the causes of the island devastation. Yet the contrasts are not simple and are not the ones that I had expected. Europeans’ “official” voices debated among themselves whether Yupik improvidence, alcoholism, or the commercial killing off of the walrus and seal were causal, while “native” voices, channeled through Oozevaseuk’s family stories, blamed those Yupik who cut the flesh from living seals, and so broke a moral pact between people and natural resources.
Estelle Oozevaseuk’s current personal and cultural contexts for telling her Yupik narrative, including her 2001 visit to the Smithsonian as part of a repatriation of Yupik artifacts that occasioned a retelling, are integrated with these historical contexts in what commentator James Clifford states is “always more than correcting the colonial record… [but] a matter of producing some bigger, deeper, open-ended story about indigenous continuity, and enduring ethical purpose, through these terrible struggles and transformations” (71). I thought of Clifford’s own “Fort Ross Meditations” on the complex interplay of Russian and American imperialism in the Northwest, as author Crowell noted divergent retellings and archaeological evidence among other Yupik clan members to further complicate narrative and memory (70–71). I used Living with Stories, and this chapter in particular, in a Survey of American Folklore course to have students and instructor rethink our boundaries. That we now know about, and even care about, a small island off the coast of Alaska proves a point.
Folklorist Diane Goldstein, on the book’s jacket cover, effectively places Living with Stories in current scholarship: “With the growing interdisciplinary interest in narrative, this book is an important corrective, a thoughtful, respectful, and sensitive step forward in understanding narrative process.” I would emphasize that it addresses issues of the intersections and disjunctions of oral history work and folkloristics that remain, but are made more open to discussion by its generative dialogue.
WORKS CITED
Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Cruikshank, Julie. The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
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[Review length: 955 words • Review posted on April 27, 2010]