Press Play to hear Janice M. Del Negro who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on revising feminist folk-tales: naming the women. on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Dr. Janice M. Del Negro writes
When Eric and I talked about a topic for this interview, he asked me what was I passionate about? I am passionate about naming the women.

That being said, I was reluctant to use the word “feminist” in the title of this podcast. The word “feminist” is a trigger word that elicits, in many people, a strong emotional response. Since I agree with Mark Twain – “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug”- the choice of the word “feminist” was problematic, because nearly everyone has a distinct personal definition of that particular word. Eric bypassed that concern, however: “people will search ‘feminist’ online,” he said to the library school professor. So here we are, “Revisioning the Feminist Folktale,” and I am not sure that two people on the planet have the same definition of what “feminist” means, never mind folktale, or oral tradition. So I’ll stick to passion.

I am passionate about retelling folktales. I am passionate about excavating old tales, tales that have already survived for centuries, for emotional truths that resonate with contemporary listeners. There is no definitive version of a folktale, no “original”; we can point to the earliest remembered, written, or preserved version, but not to an “original.” Folktales change over time in order to survive, and re-telling folktales for present-day listeners is a contemporary offshoot of what is popularly understood as the oral tradition.

Tales come to us differently today than in the past. A handful of contemporary American storytellers can say they heard folktales from family or friends, tales that were handed down orally, from mouth to ear, but many of us who retell folktales first meet the tales on the page. Sometimes the tales work just as we find them; sometimes they resonate oddly, indicating currents beneath the surface. Those currents offer an opportunity to retell from where the teller stands now, instead of from where the story stood then.

My stand includes my gender. I am a woman. I am fascinated by the women in folktales, not just the women characters, but the women storytellers. Many of the tales we have were collected by men operating within the social mores of their times. The stories these good men chose to collect and the manner in which they collected them were filters through which the stories travelled, affecting the tale’s content and presentation. I look at a folktale so collected and I want to know: what isn’t there? What would the stories be like if the women were telling them to each other in the kitchen, while the collector was making notes on the polite version in the parlor? Those are the stories I want to tell, and since no one collected them in quite that way, I make my own. Filtered through my own experiences, I try and make an old tale new.

Stories may be static on the physical or virtual page, but for as long as the storyteller is telling, the story has blood and breath. Every retelling of a folktale, imbued with the individual blood and breath of the storyteller, is unique. The storytelling community recognizes this in a practical and concrete way: there are many popular conference and festival programs in which several tellers elect to retell the same folktale, just to show what is possible.

I am enormously interested in the fact that many female storytellers choose to retell traditional tales from points of view not always represented in collected or anthologized versions of folktales. Milbre Burch, Elizabeth Ellis, Susan Klein, Barbara Schutz-Gruber, Megan Wells, my own students (and too many others to name even with unlimited bandwidth) approach folktales through their own artistic processes. I cannot speak to the specifics of anyone’s process but my own, and even my process is malleable; the process changes with every story, because every story speaks differently to every teller.

JMD

Janice M. Del Negro, PhD.
Author, Educator, Storyteller

Janice M. Del Negro is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where she teaches Storytelling, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, and Foundations in Library and Information Science. Professor Del Negro did her doctoral work at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Del Negro has been a featured speaker, storyteller, and workshop leader at the National Storytelling Festival, the Allerton Conference (”Stories: From Fireplace to Cyberspace”), the Illinois Library Association, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Fox Valley Music and Storytelling Festival, the Champaign Public Library Children’s Literature Festival, and many other celebratory events. She has spoken and conducted workshops on various aspects of children’s literature and publishing, storytelling, and reading motivation for teachers, librarians, parents, and other educators in a variety of settings, including the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the State Library of Illinois, the North Carolina State Library, and the University of San Diego.
Del Negro’s first picture book, Lucy Dove (1998) won the Anne Izard Storytelling Award; her second picture book, Willa and the Wind (2005) was an ALA Notable Book, and an Honor Book for the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Her recent collection of supernatural tales for young adults, Passion and Poison, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2007, received starred reviews in both Horn Book and School Library Journal.
Del Negro has performed and lectured extensively in libraries, schools, and community centers throughout the United States. Her specialties include retelling traditional folktales, reading motivation through literature and storytelling, and transformation stories, with a gentle emphasis on women and ghosts. Her first recording, Journeywomen and Ghostly Passages, was released in July, 1991; her most recent recordings, Romantic Wonder: Tales of Love and Magic, and Shadow’s Sisters: Shapeshifters, Wraiths, and Spirited Women, were released in April, 1999. She is currently working on a new recording entitled Fortune’s Daughters: Folktales and Ghost Tales, to be released in 2008. Del Negro has reviewed for Booklist Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and School Library Journal, and is currently reviewing for Booklist.
She has served on both the Newbery, Caldecott, and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award committees. In 2004-2005 Del Negro served as chair of the 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award committee. and subsequently served as chair of the 2007 Caldecott Award Committee.
Del Negro was formerly the director of the Center for Children’s Books, a special collection of children’s books located at the University of Illinois. Before taking her position as Center director, she was the editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a monthly review journal of books for youth. Del Negro went to the University of Illinois from the State Library of North Carolina, where she was a consultant for children’s services and public libraries throughout the state. Prior to this she worked for fourteen years as a children’s librarian for the Chicago Public Library, including five years as Assistant Director of Children’s Services.

Eric James Wolf, professional storyteller and host of the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Show, is available for print, radio and television interviews to defend the use of the scary Halloween stories in the oral tradition with children.

Scary Halloween stories and ghost stories for children have taken the place of ritual trials of adulthood for teenagers, according to Mr. Wolf. They also serve as a means for adults to warn children away from dangerous places or behavior. Ghost stories and scary Halloween stories in the oral tradition can be age appropriate and satisfying for families. Currently on his the Art of Storytelling shows website he has five interviews available for easy download about the art of telling scary Halloween stories.

Eric Wolf does not condone or support horror or the graphic use of violence. “It is possible, however, by carefully working within the confines of scary Halloween stories and ghost stories for children, to leave our audience psychologically stronger and more emotionally capable of dealing with their fears or the shock of real world disasters,” Mr. Wolf says.

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Storyteller Eric James Wolf has performed nationally at such venues as the American Museum of Natural History; Bank Street School for Children; Barnard College; Blue Theater – Toronto, Canada; Columbia University; The Fund for the City of New York; Kings Island Amusement Park; New York City Clearwater Festival; New Jersey Liberty Science Center; and The International Performing Artists for Youth.

He is the host and producer of the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf, a one hour interview format show. Mr. Wolf has M.S. in Education from Lesley University.

Eric Wolf’s Websitehttp://www.ericwolf.org

The Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Show
http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com

A list of five episodes on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf with storytellers speaking on how to use scary storytelling with kids.
http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/category/scary-storytelling/

To schedule an interview, call…
(937) 767-8696

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Play to hear this interview that was recorded as a conference call on September 24th at 8 PM ET – 2008. Thomas Freeze spike about the advantages of sharing ghost stories with children.

Thomas Freese writes…
I ejoyied being on Eric’s “Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Podcast” on September 23, 8PM Eastern time. I’ve been a professional storyteller and author of ghost story books for over a decade in addition to my work as an art therapist and licensed professional counselor. Our topic will be “Why tell children scary ghost stories?” I have over a dozen storytelling programs that I perform for schools, libraries, festivals, churches and private parties. And several of those themed programs are ghost stories. I’ve collected both true ghost stories as well as authoring original fiction mysteries. Kids love storytelling and kids really love ghost stories!

I was fascinated with ghost stories since I was a middle school student. In fact, one of my favorite books, Strangely Enough, which I bought at a Scholastic Book Fair, is still in print and still available for kids at school. After reading it and questioning my Mom about real experiences with ghosts she related a tale of an encounter at her Aunt’s farm when out horse riding. I’ve been hooked on ghostly mysteries ever since.

Fast forward to my life in Kentucky where I was a volunteer singer at the historic 200 plus year Shaker village called Pleasant Hill, located near Harrodsburg in Mercer County. During my ten years singing I heard numerous stories of experiences with the Shaker spirits and I decided to take a stand, rescue the fact or folklore that would be lost oral accounts if no one else researched and recorded them. I interviewed over 60 employees and guests starting in 1998 and later (2005) published those first-hand tales in my Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. I found children of all ages fascinated with the stories of spirits who seemed to act very much in character with the once-living Shakers. Folks heard singing, shouting, stomping in the 1820 Meeting House. They saw Shaker-dressed figures on the old village pike.

As I performed my ghost stories program I included some true tales along with the fanciful entertaining fictional tales. I found kids no less interested in the true tales despite some of those seeming a bit less high-impact than fiction stories. I created a number of guitar songs to accompany my tales of witches, ghosts and other creatures. In live performances of mixed ages I noticed children mesmerized by true ghost stories.

In planning discussions with some teachers or librarians I was intrigued to see that some basically requested “the scarier the better” whereas others wanted assurances at least concerning the younger ages, say up to Kindergarten or first grade. I think a number of scary tales can be done successfully and without undue “trauma” at younger ages but the teller’s environment makes a difference. I sing a song to normalize the fear of ghostly stories at the beginning of my program. What I find fascinating also is that whatever the age of the audience, younger children through adult, one can find individuals sitting side by side of the same age where one is wide eyed with participatory “fear” and the other smirks and says, “That’s not scary enough!”

Please join me for this Podcast as I consider the topic with several professional hats, ghost story author, storyteller and professional counselor and therapist. My credentials include BA Psychology, MA Expressive Therapies, LPCC (Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, ATR-BC (Art Therapist Board Certified). In addition, I have worked as a Psychic Counselor and I can tell you that some things kids see are not “just their imagination!” Check out my books, first one mentioned above, and also Fog Swirler and 11 Other Ghost Stories and just released Strange and Wonderful Things: a Collection of Ghost Stories with Special Appearances by Witches and Other Bizarre Creatures.

Check out my site for more information: http://www.thomaslfreese.com/