Duncan, Barbara R., Collector and Editor. Living Stories of the Cherokee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 253 pages with photos, index and bibliography.
This important collection contains seventy-one stories from six contemporary members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee who are active story-tellers. It gives excellent background information on each and presents the stories in an innovative way, ending each line where the teller put the emphasis so that the pages almost look like they contain verse. The result is a very authentic grass-roots telling of the stories. They read like contemporary Cherokee sound when telling traditional stories to their children and grandchildren, not like scholars re-telling stories and cleaning them up to conform to their biases. The stories vary from traditional folk tales to topical recollections of public events to family lore utilizing a variety of sources. An "Introduction" puts the stories in context. This is a truly significant contribution to the field of Cherokee lore. Before this book came out, most books of Cherokee stories were simply re-tellings of some of the favored stories found in The Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney who transcribed them from his informant, Swimmer, at the turn of the century. At a time when some people with tenuous claims to Cherokee ancestry and virtually no connections to life as it is lived in Cherokee, North Carolina, offer themselves as "experts," this book, which was created with permission of the Tribal Council and contains only stories of people who have lived in Cherokee, is particularly significant. People organizing Appalachian Festivals or Conferences who wish to have the Cherokee represented can simply contact one of the storytellers represented in this collection. **Click here to order**
Review by George Brosi, copyright 1998.