Thoughts on organizing #Folklore collections in #SoutheastAsia or #SEAFolklore It takes a lot of work to find someone who has a number of traditional stories & identifying those that are variants in communities' oral traditions. How do you write those down? There are choices

You might opt for the verbatim spoken form, but risk losing the poetry, and implicit meanings and allusions especially when translating it to English, and miss possible connections to other stories later if a character or their descendant reappears in another tale.

If written in prose form, experienced writers might opt to deepen the narrative, smooth out the story for consistency and greater symbolism, 'literary merits' according to global or US standards, increased descriptions & asides. But oral retellings can suffer later #SEAFOLKLORE

Often, a decision is made to just get the stories down treating them as individual, stand-alone tales & often in a "chronological" format starting with "Creation" stories. But in #SEAFolklore it's becoming clear we might need to look at how cultures weight and prioritize tales

"How we were created is of far less interest to us than the story of how the trickster defied the kings who came and went, or the story of the old woman who tricked the trickster."

"Here, we tell the story of the hungry grandmother ghost more than the story of the 1st shaman."

In Laos, #SEAFolklore gets complicated because there IS overlap between the 150+ cultures engaged with different traditions. You'll see a tremendous variance in the presumed abilities of weretigers among the mountain cultures vs. lowland cultures. And that sense shifts a LOT.

So, amateurs might not recognize how interesting it is when you see a Hmong-Khmu or Lao-Tai Dam or a Khmer-Lao variation of a "common" story we all share in #SEAFolklore, or the geographical variations as we "hear" it in the North compared to the South, or near the borders.

A Vietnamese poet once griped about 2000s SEA American books: NOT ALL OF US COME FROM THE ROYAL FAMILIES. MY PARENTS WERE FAMERS. And it always sticks with me that #SEAFolklore could do a better job recognizing, valuing, and documenting the variants across class stratifications.

A #SEAFolklore story in a nation may well be "commonly shared" but the meaning may indeed be different if a wealthy family loves discussing it assuming everyone roots for the handsome prince, vs. how the orphan boy or the poor ugly girl who helps him sees the story.

When we look at early collections during the colonial era (1880s-1950s) #SEAFolklore in English & French in particular need to be viewed askance b/c what makes it into translation serves the colonizer, not the people who preserved and retold the tales for centuries.

A case in point: A #SEAFolklore collection of Lao tales only featured stories of deceitful, untrustworthy, lazy Buddhist monks written by a Christian missionary. While it's doubtful many Lao actually read or heard these offensive stories the intent to undermine Buddhism was clear

#SEAFolklore #SEAStorytelling takes work. We have to be comfortable none of us are going to put out a "perfect" and "authoritative" collection understanding these issues but we can make an effort to be responsible & do our best to challenge & improve upon what's come before.

In the centuries ahead, we will now have to thread a needle: These are public domain stories in the commons, part of our shared #SEAFolklore heritage, so most claims to copyright, efforts to trademark characters, protect intellectual property rights should be considered carefully

But there will also be value in standing behind your retelling and putting your name behind it so people can see that what you've shared is a specific variant, and later on, we can attribute it correctly if it's an interesting take that others built upon in #SEAFolklore

This leads into a case for us to support diversification in #SEAFolklore publishing, an ecosystem where yes, it's perfectly reasonable to get 12+ books of the same story if they're each different enough to encourage more people to keep the stories alive & part of our community

Emerging writers in #SEAFolklore might do well to approach their journey with a variation on #Fahrenheit451, where you embrace & build expertise in 1 or 2 stories, while learning about the others to understand the interrelationship, & to take up the slack in case of crisis

As a community, we have to commit to supporting BOTH "imperfect" and "perfect" retellings of #SEAFolklore tales. This will build inclusion & a passion for stories greater than ourselves, a drive for innovation and a lifelong commitment to expanding our traditions

That's all for today, but we'll discuss more challenges and opportunities later in #SEAFolklore. Now go talk to your elders :)