Predominately composed of reprinted articles focusing on folklore from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this text fulfills the basic expectations of its title. Folklore is revealed to be a cross-gender, multi-aged process found in numerous disciplines and cultural locations.
Four themes designate the major sections of the text. Folklore and history encompasses four articles covering topics such as the roadrunner in fact and folklore, military traditions of the Texas frontier, and the role of oral narrative in maintaining local history. The second section focuses on folklore traditions of Texan women: la llorona, cooking communities, and beauty pageants. The third or occupational folklore section presents lore from rural mail carriers, oil field workers, a country doctor, a nurseryman, and a water engineer. The fourth section reveals lore of policemen, politicians, and other characters such as horse traders, bootleggers, and Cactus Jack Gardner, Vice-President from 1933–40 and Texan folk hero.
The three articles composing the final portion of the text elude thematic classification beyond the section title “Odds and Ends.” Two cover a short discussion of the tradition of records in family Bibles and lore in retirement homes and extended care locations. The final article serves both as justification for the use of folklore and writing in the university classroom and as the conclusion for the text under discussion here.
The text’s weaknesses are two. First is the overly conservative reflection of the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries’ cultural breadth. Notably absent from discussion are the lore of cultural groups beyond Caucasians and Hispanics, lore of gendered groups such as the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities, and lore closely related to urban environments and groups that are found within the state. Second, though printed in 2006, there is not one article focusing on early twenty-first century folklore and Texan life.
While this text clearly presents folklore as a historical part of small-town life, there are a few pieces that through skillful writing, like the editor’s authored piece about language and culture in Texas law enforcement in the 1990s, make delightful exceptions. This enforcement chapter and pieces presenting oral narratives about working oil fields in Texas, traditional small gatherings of friends to tell tales and jokes, and community knowledge and interaction in support of small-town beauty pageants, are presented in the active voice as events that could be happening just down the street or across state lines now. As a member of the first generation born outside the state to a six-generation Texan family, I found this text and these articles in particular a compelling look into Texan folklore, history, and cultures over two centuries. In fact, the most vibrant depictions of Folklore in All of Us, In All We Do not only bring the essence of the folklore process into the twenty-first century for today’s reader, but will take it into the next as well.
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[Review length: 470 words • Review posted on September 1, 2009]