Kusiq
An Eskimo Life History from the Arctic Coast of Alaska
"Living with Stories echoes Levi-Strauss's famous maxim that some phenomena are 'good to think with.' These fine essays and commentaries reveal how such reflections sink into life experience and circulate in stories told and sung aloud."
—Julie Cruikshank, author of Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination
"Living with Stories is, first of all, a compelling read. The diversity of approaches to the re-telling of narratives and the variety of cultures in which that diversity is explored are remarkable. The breadth of analytical perspectives provides a unique contribution to narrative scholarship. Each author has carefully taken the tools of his or her discipline and brought them to bear on specific performative moments in particular culturally relevant ways."
—Margaret K. Brady, author of Some Kind of Power: Navajo Children's Skinwalker Narratives
In essays about communities as varied as Alaskan Native, East Indian, Palestinian, Mexican, and African American, oral historians, folklorists, and anthropologists look at how traditional and historical oral narratives live through re-tellings, gaining meaning and significance in repeated performances, from varying contexts, through cultural and historical knowing, and due to tellers' consciousness of their audiences.
