McElroy (A Long Way from St. Louie, 1997, etc.) recounts her visit
to Madagascar, where she hunts and gathers the island's oral
traditions, tapping both the journey and the stories for their
sense of magic, their "ancient time." The University of Washington
poet went to the African island country to immerse herself in the
fables, legends, myths, and song-poems of village folk artists, not
as ethnography but out of love and appreciation. Most of the tales
she retells are quick on their feet and short-lived and, not
rarely, obscure in an untroubling way. As with most folklore, they
contain elements that require listeners to suspend disbelief and
accept a certain level of magic at play in order to garner the
story's gift, which often revolves around examples of bravery,
morality, responsibility - the wisdom of ancestors. The stories
also encompass origin myths, or pose as brief expressions of larger
truths: why dogs chase cats, how a child should speak to an adult,
how tricksters plot revenge, how places get their names, why and
how spouses cheat on each other. Included as well is a sampler of
contemporary Malagasy poetry. Cradling the stories is the filigreed
narrative of McElroy's journey through the island. She displays a
fine talent for description - the wealth of colors in a clouded
sky, "the suddenness of open space," the bustle of a cattle market,
"the waxy scent of dust" in a drowsy noontime square, the way "the
sun, filtered through mist, washed the houses in bloodstreaks" -
her words, like the landscape, lush to skeletal, allowing readers
to call up each place and fix it in their mind's eye. She also
displays a tart humor about all the many vexations of travel,
giving her memories an enviable buoyancy. A piquant glimpse into
Malagasy storytelling, set to advantage by the kind of poised
writing that makes one slow down, read carefully, savor. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Gifted travel writer, poet, professor of English, and insightful
observer of human nature, Colleen McElroy journeyed to Madagascar
to undertake a Fulbright research project exploring Malagasy oral
traditions and myths. In Over the Lip of the World she depicts with
equal verve the various storytelling traditions of the island and
her own adventures in trying to find and record them. McElroy's
tale of an African American woman's travels among the people of
Madagascar is told with wit, insight, and humor. Throughout it she
interweaves English translations of Malagasy stories of heroism and
morality, royalty and commoners, love and revenge, and the magic of
tricksters and shapechangers.
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