First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is the role of folklore in the discussion of catastrophe and trauma? How do disaster survivors use language, ritual, and the material world to articulate their experiences? What insights and tools can the field of folkloristics offer survivors for navigating and narrating disaster and its aftermath? Can folklorists contribute to broader understandings of empathy and the roles of listening in ethnographic work? We Are All Survivors is a collection of essays exploring the role of folklore in the wake of disaster. Contributors include scholars from the United States and Japan who have long worked with disaster-stricken communities or are disaster survivors themselves; individual chapters address Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and two earthquakes in Japan, including the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011. Adapted from a 2017 special issue of Fabula (from the International Society for Folk Narrative Research), the book includes a revised introduction, an additional chapter with original illustrations, and a new conclusion considering how folklorists are documenting the COVID-19 pandemic. We Are All Survivors bears witness to survivors' expressions of remembrance, grieving, and healing.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is the role of folklore in the discussion of catastrophe and trauma? How do disaster survivors use language, ritual, and the material world to articulate their experiences? What insights and tools can the field of folkloristics offer survivors for navigating and narrating disaster and its aftermath? Can folklorists contribute to broader understandings of empathy and the roles of listening in ethnographic work? We Are All Survivors is a collection of essays exploring the role of folklore in the wake of disaster. Contributors include scholars from the United States and Japan who have long worked with disaster-stricken communities or are disaster survivors themselves; individual chapters address Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and two earthquakes in Japan, including the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011. Adapted from a 2017 special issue of Fabula (from the International Society for Folk Narrative Research), the book includes a revised introduction, an additional chapter with original illustrations, and a new conclusion considering how folklorists are documenting the COVID-19 pandemic. We Are All Survivors bears witness to survivors' expressions of remembrance, grieving, and healing.

Every winter a handful of Cajun Louisiana folk artists assembles unlikely mixtures of material to shape masks for their Cajun Mardi Gras celebrations. They use window screens, chicken feathers, yarn, hair, Magic Markers, and hot glue as they create fanciful, even bizarre masks that will be worn just one day in the year. Such creations transform their wearers into wild revelers who move through the countryside singing, dancing, and begging for money and food. As they generate merriment, they climb trees, chase chickens, and create a general and playful havoc. Cajun Mardi Gras celebrants are unlike their counterparts in New Orleans, where masked revelers ride through the streets on floats or parade serenely through ballrooms. The masked country Cajuns engage in rousing, physically energetic performances as they cavort through the countryside. Out of necessity their captivating masks combine the ingredients of durability, shock value, and allure with age-old folk patterns and innovations from contemporary culture. Here is a study of the Cajun Mardi Gras tradition and its manifestation in the work of six of the most creative and popular folk artists in two rural communities. Potic Rider and the Moreau and LeBlue families represent the male maskmaking traditions of Basile, Louisiana. Suson Launey, Renee Fruge, and Jackie Miller portray the female role in festivities held in the rural region of Tee Mamou. As the communities celebrate, their masks become an intrinsic component of the annual rites. This book introduces the artists, the performances, and processes of creating the fantastical masks. Carl Lindahl, co-editor of Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi), is a professor of English at the University of Houston. Carolyn Ware is Coordinator of the Pine Hills Culture Program at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg

Here are more than two hundred oral tales from some of Louisiana's finest storytellers. In this comprehensive volume of great range are transcriptions of narratives in many genres (ghost stories, tall tales, myths, magic tales, buried-treasure tales, and reminiscences of small-town life), from diverse voices (including Cajuns, Creoles, Native Americans, African Americans, and Louisianans of Hungarian, Italian, and Vietnamese descent), and from all regions of the state. Told in both intimate and public settings ranging from the front porch to the festival stage, these tales proclaim the great vitality and variety of Louisiana's oral narrative traditions. Given special focus are Harold Talbert, Lonnie Gray, Bel Abbey, Ben Guine, and Enola Matthews--whose wealth of imagination, memory, and artistry demonstrates the depth as well as the breadth of the storyteller's craft.

For tales told in Cajun and Creole French, Koasati, and Spanish, the editors have supplied both the original language and English translation. To the volume Maida Owens has contributed an overview of Louisiana's folk culture and a survey of folklife studies of various regions of the state. Carl Lindahl's introduction and notes discuss the various genres and styles of storytelling common in Louisiana and link them with the worldwide art of the folktale. This is a book that will have appeal both for scholars and for anyone who loves a well-told story.

In Ernest Games Carl Lindahl recovers a folkloric world long hidden fromreaders of Chaucer. Lindahl is the first critic to demonstrate how the poem reflectsthe social and artistic patterns of medieval folk performance. Combining currentapproaches from the fields of literary criticism, social history, and folklore, Earnest Games begins with a study of Chaucer's setting and characters. Lindahldiscovers that Chaucer gives each community -- the gentils, the churls, and thepilgrims -- a game strategy that faithfully reflects the social realities of theEnglish Middle Ages.

"Second Line Rescue: Improvised Responses to Katrina and Rita" chronicles the brave and creative acts through which Gulf Coast people rescued their neighbors during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Ordinary citizens joined in with whatever resources they had. Unlike many of the official responders, vernacular rescuers found ways around paralysis produced by a breakdown in communications and infrastructure. They were able to dispel unfounded fears produced by erroneous or questionable reporting. The essays, personal narratives, media reports, and field studies presented here all have to do with effective and often ingenious answers that emerged from the people themselves. Their solutions are remarkably different from the hamstrung government response, and their perspectives are a tonic to sensationalized media coverage. The first part of the collection deals with Gulf Coast rescuers from outside stricken communities: those who, safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, marshaled their resources to help their fellow citizens. It includes some analysis and scholarly approaches, but it also includes direct responses and first-hand field reports. The second part features the words of hurricane survivors displaced from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities to Houston, Texas. In many cases, the "victims" themselves were the first responders, rescuing family, friends, and strangers. All of the stories, whether from the "outside" or "inside" responders, reveal a shared history of close-knit community bonds and survival skills sharpened by hard times. This book is about what went right in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita--in spite of all that went so wrong.

This volume is about North American Marchen, a vernacular art form that is often strangely ignored or misconstrued. At the same time, the vitality and appeal of the genre are evidenced by its persistent presentation as written literature. The essays in this volume reexamine common assumptions about "magic" tales and their tellers, reconsidering the performance, collection, transcription, publication, and interpretation of narratives that continue to live orally especially in the private realm as one mechanism of intergenerational communication or as a symbolic expression of worldview.

In addition to four interpretive essays, six segments focus on storytellers and their transcribed narratives, accompanied by introductions that place them in context. Some segments compare editing practices or narrative styles; others represent the first publication of contemporary narratives or tales that have long lain in archives, unheard and unavailable. All attest to the skill of the tellers and the artistry of their creations."