FW: [SEELANGS] Reading list for folklore volunteers

[Sibelan Forrester]

Dear Genevra,

For your friend's purpose, I would strongly recommend Margaret Paxson's 
SOLOVYOVO: THE STORY OF MEMORY IN A RUSSIAN VILLAGE (2005). It's full of 
evocative photographs, snippets of dialogue drawn from her extensive 
ethnography of villagers living in the region of Belozersk, and good 
discussion of how present-day memory in a neglected part of Russia 
stretches through the Soviet period into a more distant past. It's not 
fiction, but it certainly grabs and holds the reader's interest.

Best wishes,

Sibelan Forrester


On 9/18/10 6:04 PM, Genevra Gerhart wrote:
> My friend Margaret, below, describes well what she is looking for:
>
> Genevra Gerhart
>
> ggerhart at comcast.net
>
> www.genevragerhart.com
> www.russiancommonknowledge.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mckibben, Margaret [mailto:mmck at sccd.ctc.edu]
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 5:38 PM
> To: nataliek at UALBERTA.CA
> Cc: Genevra Gerhart
> Subject: RE: [SEELANGS] Reading list for folklore volunteers
>
> Ah, Natalie, your book and Ivanits' book have long been on the list!
>
> There is no lack of good scholarly material on Russian folklore which is
> accessible to the general English-speaking reader.   And experience shows
> that Western volunteers on folklore expeditions generally "get it" when it
> comes to recording stories or songs or photographing textiles.
>
> What  they don't get are the everyday lives of  informants.  The role of
> alcohol,  male precedence, ramshackle exteriors with spotless interiors, the
> litanies of personal woes,  nostalgia for the Soviet past, notions of
> responsibility,  who's really in charge.  There is material here for a
> library of scholarly treatises, but a working knowledge of the territory is
> most easily absorbed through fiction.
>
> Should I suddenly find myself immersed in genteel society of 1860s Concord,
> my memories of  Alcott's  Little Women books would be a pretty good starting
> point for understanding my new milieu.  If I could find the equivalent for a
> Kruschev-era kolkhoz, I'd be delighted.
>
> Margaret
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>    options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                      http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------