Table Of ContentTHEORIZING FOLKLORE FROM
THE MARGINS
Activist Encounters in Folklore and Ethnomusicology
David A. McDonald, editor
THEORIZING
FOLKLORE FROM
THE MARGINS
CRITICAL AND ETHICAL APPROACHES
Q
E D I T E D B Y
S O L I M A R O T E R O
A N D
M I N T Z I A U A N D A M A R T Í N E Z - R I V E R A
Indiana University Press
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ISBN 978-0-253-05608-5 (ebook)
First printing 2021
This volume is dedicated to
our intellectual and family ancestors,
who opened, cleared, and created the roads
on which we now walk.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Part I. Critical Paths
Introduction: How Does Folklore Find Its Voice in the
Twenty-First Century? An Offering/Invitation from the Margins /
Solimar Otero and Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera 3
1. White Traditioning and Bruja Epistemologies: Rebuilding the House of
USAmerican Folklore Studies / Rachel V. González-Martin 22
2. Un Tumbe Ch’ixi: Incorporating Afro-Descendant Ideas into an
Andean Anticolonial Methodology / Juan Eduardo Wolf 42
3. Disrupting the Archive / Miriam Melton-Villanueva and
Sheila Bock 62
Part II. Framing the Narrative
4. Afrolatinx Folklore and Representation: Interstices and
Antiauthenticity / Solimar Otero 83
5. Behaving like Relatives: Or, We Don’t Sit Around and
Talk Politics with Strangers / Rhonda R. Dass 103
6. Political Protest, Ideology, and Social Criticism in Wolof Folk Poetry /
Cheikh Tidiane Lo 113
7. Sugar Cane Alley: Teaching the Concept of “Group” from a Critical
Folkloristics Perspective / Katherine Borland 131
8. movimiento armado / armed movement / Itzel Guadalupe Garcia 157
Part III. Visualizing the Present
9. Ni lacras, ni lesbianas normalizadas: Trauma, matrimonio, conectividad
y representación audiovisual para la comunidad lesbiana en Cuba /
Mabel Cuesta 169
viii Contents
10. “¿Batata? ¡Batata!”: Examining Puerto Rican Visual Folk Expression in
Times of Adversity / Gloria M. Colom Braña 190
11. Forming Strands and Ties in the Knotted Atlantic:
Methodologies of Color and Practice of Beadwork in Lucumí
Religion / Martin A. Tsang 220
12. Of Blithe Spirits: Narratives of Rebellion, Violence, and Cosmic Memory
in Haitian Vodou / Alexander Fernández 238
Part IV. Placing Community
13. “No One Would Believe Us”: An Autoethnography of Conducting
Fieldwork in a Conflict Zone / Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera 257
14. “La Sierra Juárez en Riverside”: The Inaugural Oaxacan Philharmonic
Bands Audition on a University Campus / Xóchitl Chávez 274
15. Hidden Thoughts and Exposed Bodies: Art, Everyday Life, and
Queering Cuban Masculinities / Cory W. Thorne 293
16. Complexifying Identity through Disability: Critical Folkloristic
Perspectives on Being a Parent and Experiencing Illness and
Disability through My Child / Phyllis M. May-Machunda 313
Index 335
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Community is central to what we do and who we are as scholars, activists, and
individuals. This work is the result of a multiplicity and diversity of communities
that supported us through Theorizing Folklore from the Margins’s different stages
of conceptualization, creation, and production.
To some degree, Theorizing Folklore from the Margins would not have come to
fruition without John Nieto-Phillips’s invitation, in 2017, to edit a special volume
of Latinx folklore for Chiricú Journal. The seeds for this project were planted while
we worked with the Chiricú Journal community, as we were able to think of differ-
ent paths for folklore studies and play with ideas that found a home in this volume.
At Indiana University Press, we would first like to thank Janice Frisch, who
believed in this project since the beginning and brought us into the press. We are
also thankful to our editor Jennika Baines and the whole team at Indiana Univer-
sity Press for their hard work and willingness to collaborate with us to complete
our vision. We also want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed
comments and suggestions, as they made this volume stronger.
We would also like to thank our authors, as Theorizing Folklore from the Mar-
gins would not be possible without their contributions. We are grateful that they
trusted us to curate their stories, ideas, and creations with care, respect, and love.
Many individuals communicated vital suggestions to us as we vetted the work
at the American Folklore Society annual conferences. Norma Cantú, Olivia Ca-
daval, and Guillermo de los Reyes gave particularly insightful interpretations
of this collaborative project at different stages of its development at the meet-
ings. We also appreciate the support of the Cultural Diversity Committee; the
Chicana/o section; and the Folklore Latino, Latinoamericano, and Caribeño
section in providing venues for related discussions aimed to include scholars of
color in AFS leadership and projects.
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