Review of Myths, Legends, & Folktales of America: An Anthology. By D. Leeming and J. Page. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xi +221 pages. Bibliography, Text Credits, Index. ISBN 0-19-511784-0 paper bound $ 15.95.

As I read this book, I was working on a website for my Language Arts Methods students. I was searching for links to authentic curricular materials on Native Americans because I’ve long been disgusted with the ways Native Americans get represented in elementary classrooms. I chanced onto Eliot Singer’s excellent article, “Fakelore, Multiculturalism, and the Ethics of Children's Literature,” (http://www.msu.edu/user/singere/fakelore.html) which I linked to my teacher resources site. This article speaks very directly to the problem of representation and spurious “folklore”: “knowledgeable, scholarly comparisons between picture books and originals invariably show the ‘improvements’ significantly distort native style, characterization, plot, theme, meaning, and belief.” Singer also says

[these] books not only eliminate the "otherness" of other cultures to the point they are a poor excuse for multicultural curriculum, they perpetuate stereotypes of native storytelling as intellectually and aesthetically child-like. If authors would stop oversimplifying, assimilating, playing to the market, and using other people's stories to teach their own preferred "virtues," and if educators would stop encouraging the production and use of fakelore, we could start making progress on the legitimate problem of how to edit, frame, and teach authentic traditional tribal oral literatures to make them available and accessible to children.

That’s exactly why I was looking for authentic materials to begin with. I really find what goes on in the typical classroom disturbing. Unfortunately, Myths, Legends, & Folktales of America seems to me to be one of those books which add to the problem. It’s representation of subordinated cultures is problematic.

Overall, I think this book is pretty weak. Not only are the selections of “folklore” poorly chosen, they are also not adequately glossed. For instance, the last tale is a nice Asian rendition of the Cinderella story, but, not only do the authors not even mention the Cinderella connection, there is also no discussion of how it fits into the canon of Asian or Asian-American folktales. The only editorial comment is a statement that there isn’t much Asian-American folklore--a statement anyone who has ever watched Margaret Cho or read Amy Tan knows is not the case. The editors’ only other comment is a seemingly pointless statement about gurus in America.

This book is not uninteresting to read, but I don’t think it contributes anything to the discipline of folklore and perhaps even harms it by its heavy handed meshing of authentic and spurious lore and the almost complete lack of scholarly apparatus. It isn’t just the Asian Americans and Native Americans who are abused in this book. Besides including pieces that refer to Native Americans as “murdering savages,” (see page 129, for instance) too much of what is included is “rewritten.” The Pecos Bill story, for instance, is “rewritten based on Botkin.” (p, 161) Why? What good is served by that? None that I can see. The editors also don’t know, or choose to ignore, the great probability that Calamity Jane herself is the one who started the rumors that she had an affair with Wild Bill Hickock. (p. 162)

So, while it is a somewhat entertaining book to read, I really don’t see that it has anything of value to offer either the scholar or the lay reader. Too much of the material needs to be contextualized and critiqued; too little of it is.