The Art of Storytelling
Barre Toelken, The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-87421-556-0. In this brilliant book, Barre Toelken distills what he has learned from more than fifty years living among and studying Native Americans in the West. Rich chapters on visual arts, dance, story and song, and humor build a careful -- and fresh -- lesson about observing Native American cultural patterns and value systems. Storytellers interested in Native tales, who perhaps already know Toelken’s ground-breaking earlier publications, will find in this book persuasive arguments about interpreting narratives. Ask not “What does this story explain?” Toelken insists, “but rather ‘What does this story dramatize?’” Wisdom, personal experience, and common sense make this book essential.
Kristin M. Langellier and Eric E. Peterson, Storytelling in Daily Life: Performing Narrative. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-59213-213-8. Storytellers interested in the continuities between public performance and private storytelling will find much to consider in this book. Taking a communications approach to storytelling, Langellier and Peterson examine family storytelling through an in-depth exploration of Franco-American Maine families; women’s storytelling as a way to deal with breast cancer; digital storytelling in a weblog; and a stage performer’s presentation of an autobiographical story. In the process, they challenge the traditional tendencies to separate “art” and “life”: “performing narrative,” they say, “ranges across all our daily ‘doings,’ our ways of ‘making do,’ and the more public ceremonies in which we make a ‘to-do’ of storytelling.”
Ahhhh! A Tribute to Brother Blue (Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill) & Ruth Edmonds Hill. LANES and Yellow Moon Press, 2003. ISBN 0-938756-67-2. (Order from www.yellowmoon.com) Nearly 200 of Brother Blue and Ruth Hill’s admirers—storytellers and scholars, musicians and ministers, neighbors and family—have gathered to praise and tell stories about these profound muses of Massachusetts and the world. Did you know that Blue inspired a jail break? danced with Buckminster Fuller? served as a lieutenant in World War II? as a child cured himself of stuttering, by Demosthenes’ own method? Here is a kaleidoscope of the community voices that have swirled around Brother Blue and Ruth Hill for most of the past century.
de Vos, Gail. Storytelling for Young Adults: A Guide to Tales for Teens. Second edition. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003. ISBN 1-56308-903-3. An excellent resource for those who perform for teens, complete with hundreds of tale suggestions (grouped and indexed by theme) with plot summaries and annotated bibliographies, as well as guidelines for choosing, introducing, and telling stories. Includes full texts of 21 sample stories.
Heckman, Andrea M. Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8263-2934-9. This is a beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated book about textiles and their meaning to the lives of their makers in the highlands of southern Peru. Heckman explores her subject from techniques to mythology, showing how the highland weavers encode their community’s cultural beliefs and stories in the complex designs of their textiles. An inspiration for tellers who like to root their stories in material objects and crafts.
McKean, Thomas. The Flowering Thorn: International Ballad Studies. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-87421-556-4. For storytellers interested in international ballad traditions, this book will be a goldmine of new scholarship and, incidentally, a way to locate sources of many interesting narratives. Like folktales performed by contemporary tellers, ballads have moved back and forth from print to oral tradition; the parallel debates are interesting.
Mellon, Nancy. Storytelling and the Art of Imagination. Yellow Moon Press, 1998. ISBN 0-938756-66-4. A welcome reissue of this important and wise book that leads readers through a series of sensitive exercises to awaken imagination and create stories. Profound insights into the typical events, landscapes, characters, and images of fairy tales join with practical suggestions for harnessing the power of these elements.
Newlove, Jean and John Dalby. Laban for All. New York: Routledge, and London: Nick Hern Books, 2004. ISBN 0-87830-180-1. Rudolf Laban, innovative 19th-century dancer and teacher of movement, based his philosophy on the belief that body and mind are one. Known nowadays primarily by dancers, in this book Laban’s theory and practice of movement are introduced to actors and others (storytellers!) who embody character and emotion in their actions.
Yashinsky, Dan. Suddenly They Heard Footsteps: Storytelling for the Twenty-first Century. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2004. ISBN 0-676-97592-5. Get this book, you storm fools! (Storm fools: “intrepid northern narrators,” “just a little mad,” who traveled through blizzards, bringing tales to families isolated by winter weather – what an image for the storyteller in today’s world.) Dan Yashinsky’s mix of wisdom, stories, and discoveries gleaned in thirty years of ardent storytelling will hold your attention and kindle your passion for the art and the activism of story. This intelligent and inspiring book concludes with seven of Yashinsky’s own stories (“based on traditional patterns that I’ve rewoven with new yarn”) and an invitation to the reader to retell them, and “add spice.”