Winner of the 2018 Chicago Folklore Prize and Winner of the 2018
Opie Prize.Jeanne Soileau, a teacher in New Orleans and south
Louisiana for more than forty years, examines how children's
folklore, especially among African Americans, has changed. From the
tumult of integration to the present, her experience afforded
unique opportunities to observe children as they played. With
integration in New Orleans during the 1960s, Soileau notes how
children began to play with one another almost immediately.
Children taught each other play routines, chants, jokes, jump-rope
rhymes, cheers, taunts, and teases-all the folk games that happen
in normal play on the street and playground. When adults-the judges
and attorneys, the parents, and the politicians-haggled and
shouted, children began to hold hands in a circle, fall down
together to "Ring around the Rosie," and tease each other in new
and creative ways. Children's ability to adapt can be seen not only
in their response to social change, but in how they adopt and
utilize pop culture and technology. Vast technological changes in
the last third of the twentieth century influenced the way children
sang, danced, played, and interacted. Soileau catalogs these
changes and studies how games evolve and transform as much as they
are preserved. She includes several topics of study: oral
narratives and songs, jokes and tales, and teasing formulae gleaned
from mostly African American sources. Because much of the field
work took place on public school playgrounds, this body of oral
narratives remains of particular interest to teachers, folklorists,
linguists, and those who study play. In the end, Soileau shows that
despite the restrictions of air-conditioning, shorter recess
periods, ever-increasing hours of television watching, the growing
popularity of video games, and carefully scripted after-school
activities, many children in south Louisiana sustain traditional
games. At the same time, they invent varied and clever new ones. As
Soileau observes, children strive through their folk play to learn
how to fit into a rapidly changing society.
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