Women Storytellers
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Wisconsin Women Library Workers 2012 Quilt Women Storytellers 1. Pueblo “storyteller dolls” By Sue Searing Pueblo “storyteller dolls” are familiar museum shop objects: clay figurines, mouths open wide in the act of talking or singing, surrounded by smaller figures of clinging, rapt children. When I first became aware of these delightful small sculptures, I assumed they were an ancient traditional art. Many sources, however, state that the first storyteller doll was created in 1964 by a woman artist, Helen Cordero (1915-1994), of Cochiti Pueblo. Cordero’s first such doll honored her grandfather, and she reputedly insisted that genuine storyteller dolls must be male; she produced female versions but called them “singing mothers.” The figurines proved so popular with folk art collectors that many Pueblo potters began to produce variations of them, and today there is wide choice of designs, some closely adhering to traditional motifs and others reflecting a more modern sensibility. Storyteller dolls remind me of the nature of story itself – transmitted from one generation to the next, transformed by each new teller, old but always new. In a biography of Cordero on the website of the National Endowment for the Arts, she is quoted taling about her artistic process: “To make good potteries, you have to do it the right way, the old way, and you have to have a special happy feeling inside. All my potteries come out of my heart. I talk to them. They’re my little people, not just pretty things that I make for money.” Regardless of gender, that’s how storytellers feel too. 2. Mother's Tales By Kathleen Weibel This quilt square honors my mother and all mothers. Many children hear their first stories from their mothers and even if fathers are also storytellers, as mine was, it is more often the mother who tells and retells the family stories we cherish as adults. In my case my mother loved a good story more than the factual details. As a child this drove me wild but as an adult I have come to appreciate he style of storytelling and wish I could tell her so. 3. Anna Nic an Luain, 1884-1954, County Donegal, Blue Stack Mountains By Joyce Latham Anna's tales, prayers, songs and riddles were collected by Seán Ó hEochaidh, of the Irish Folklore Commission. He said of her: 'She is as wonderful a woman as I ever met. I wrote down about two hundred songs from her, and as regards stories, traditional lore and other short items, there is no knowing how much I wrote down from her. Often while I was writing from her, I was reminded of a well of clear water in a great summer drought. The well would run dry today and tomorrow morning it would be full to the brim again. Thus it was with Anna. I would spend, perhaps, a whole day writing and taking down pieces of folklore of some kind from her, and I would be finished with her, it would appear, and if I went back the following day she would be ready again, and the well of knowledge would be brimming over…'[1] He also painted a most engaging picture of Anna, who had no children of her own, sitting by the fire, surrounded by the neighboring children whom she was entertaining with her store of riddles: 'When I thought I was finished with her, I was passing by one night and I put my head in the door to her. She was sitting knitting in the chimney corner with a crowd of the children of the villages sitting around her, asking them riddles... " (from Ask About Ireland: http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history- heritage/folklore-of-ireland/Folklore-of-ireland/tellers-and-their-tales-i/anna-nic-an-luain-%281884-1/) The blue jar / bottle in the square is a homage to Biddy Early (1898-1874), a wise woman of County Clare, who is reported to have received it from the fairies from her deceased son, Tom. It allowed her to see into the future, and secured her a means of income. She was also known as a natural healer in her community. It is reported that she had six husbands, but only three are known. Wisconsin Women Library Workers 2012 Quilt Women Storytellers 4. Wanda Bullard, Inspiration for The Moth By Kathy Rohde The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It is a celebration of both the raconteur, who breathes fire into true tales of ordinary life, and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. At the center of each performance is, or course, the story – and The Moth’s directors work with each storyteller to find, shape and present it. (from The Moth website) Wanda Bullard would welcome almost anyone to her bungalow on St Simon’s Island, Georgia. And as she made a mean venison stew, and always had plenty of wine and Jack Daniel’s on hand, consequently a lot of eccentrics and oddballs and whirligigs would alight there. Late at night we’d still be out on her porch and telling stories. Dayton told of the night 20,000 chickens got away from him. Bill Jennings recounted his knockabout Navy adventures. Kenny told about driving home from Nahunta in a car over-crusted with candle- wax drippings. But Wanda’s stories were much quieter. They were always about trust. They were tallies of the rewards that awaited trusting souls. For example, her tale of how her father had once trusted a prisoner in his keeping was repaid with the prisoner’s redemption. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase. Each show starts with a theme, and the storytellers explore it, often in unexpected ways. Since each story is true and every voice authentic. Audiences are drawn to the stories, like moths to a flame. 5. Nancy Schimmel By Marge Loch-Wouters The quilt square honors Nancy Schimmel, a storyteller, feminist and balladeer from California. The daughter of Malvina Reynolds, Nancy grew up surrounded by song and story. As a children's librarian and storyteller, she shared tales not only in her community but around the country. I met Nancy as she and her partner Carol Leita were telling and organizing chapters of Women Library Workers around the country. Her gentle yet commanding style of telling, humor and the tales themselves really spoke to me. I began telling the rain hat story as a new librarian and it has stayed in my storybag in the thirty seven years since I learned it. Her book, "Just Enough to make a Story" is one I still use in my work and telling. Now that's a storyteller! 6. Jewish Women Storytellers By Merle Iris Margolis I have made a family tree of my mother’s side of my family through her maternal grandmother, Minnie Goldstone. Minnie traded her challah (white Sabbath bread – here shown) for secret Hebrew and Torah lessons from her brother. Next comes her children, especially my grandmother, or “Bubby,” Rose Grais, who dealt with the Depression and the family tailor shop (hence needle and thread) with her own brand of guts. My mom, Evelyne Margolis, who learned a club sandwich did have bacon and so stopped being Kosher, and myself, who grew up on “Fiddler on the Roof” and leaned to identify with Chava, the middle daughter (you can see her with her sisters). Wisconsin Women Library Workers 2012 Quilt Women Storytellers 7. Anansi the Spider By Ann Clark Anansi the Spider is one of the great folk heroes of the oral tradition whose stories originated with the Ashanti people of Ghana and spread through West Africa and the Caribbean. He is a rogue, trickster and mischief maker, but also a wise lovable character who triumphs over much larger foes. My square celebrates Enid Margaret “Peggy” Cripps, 1921-2006, who served Anansi and myriad of storytellers by collecting his stories, translating and publishing them in the 1960’s to use a new vehicle, the printed word, to introduce his exploits a much wider audience in the West. It wasn’t her only accomplishment. As a girl of 20, a secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow during WWII, she was in charge of closing the embassy as the Germans drew closer. She worked at the Iranian embassy as well during the war, traveled to India and china, and after the war made the papers when she accepted the proposal of Joseph Appiah, a the time the President of the African Students’ Union at Oxford ,and decamped for Ghana where she lived the rest of her life. She raised four sons with Appiah, a Ghanaian lawyer, government minister and member of the Ghanaian Parliament in the newly independent country, including the years when Nkrumah threw him in jail without a trial. She found time for philanthropy in aid of her adopted country, eagerly absorbing Ghanaian culture, writing many other books for children, and after 50 years publishing her magnum opus, Bu Me Be’: Proverbs of the Akan, a collection of over 7,000 Twi proverbs. She was awarded an MBE for her work, and is buried next to her husband in Kermasi, Ghana. 8. Children's Librarians as Storytellers by Christine Jenkins Storytelling has played a key role in children’s librarianship from the profession’s Progressive Era beginnings to the present.