This books sets about the challenging task of surveying and sampling the diverse approaches and subjects of the study of the myriad cultures of the Caribbean. It is not, nor does it claim to be, a comprehensive guide to the topic. Rather, the book is an entry point into the study of Caribbean folklore, providing an overview of different areas of research (music, dance, religion, myth, foodways, etc.) and a look at the different scholarly approaches employed in this work. In addition describing the areas of research, the book provides extensive and well‐researched bibliographies for each chapter.
This volume is part of the Greenwood Folklore Handbooks series, and follows the same format as other handbooks in the series: the five chapters include Introduction, Definitions and Classifications, Examples and Texts, Scholarship and Approaches, and Contexts, plus a glossary, list of web resources, and an index.
The second chapter, Definitions and Classifications, provides an introduction to the material and to the basic concepts in folklore studies. It offers definitions of key terms such as myth, culture, and bricolage and examples of how these aspects appear in the Caribbean. This section also offers examples of the variety of music, dance, and religion of the region, and information on cultural phenomena more specific to the region such as bush medicine and magic. Because of the geographic and cultural diversity of the Caribbean, this section serves only to give brief overview of each of these topics.
In the chapter for Examples and Texts, each sample text (e.g. a poem, folktale, or ethnographic account ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages) is followed by a brief discussion explicating the text or explaining its importance. Although these primary sources are real meat of folklore studies, this is perhaps the least useful section of the book, simply because it suffers most from the effects of such a glancing survey of the material available. It would be impossible to provide a representative sample in the space allowed, so the reader must be relied upon to understand that this is but the briefest look at the substance of folklore studies of the region.
The final two chapters Scholarship and Approaches and Contexts are the strongest and liveliest ones. Hill offers a succinct but thorough overview of the history of academic methodologies that have been applied to Caribbean folklore studies in the past hundred years, from the founding of modern anthropology to post‐modern, interpretive approaches. The Contexts chapter looks at how folkloric elements appear in literature and the performing arts, both in the Caribbean region itself and abroad. These chapters are engagingly written and well documented. Together, they constitute an excellent annotated bibliography on the study of folklore and its influence on the overall cultural life of the region.
The glossary is a hidden gem, providing useful explanations of terms and names that are not much discussed in the text. I say “hidden,” because nowhere do the chapters refer the reader to the glossary. Such pointers would be welcome. In general, the book would be stronger and more coherent if it included rather more structure of this sort. There are photographs scattered throughout the book, but the purpose of these illustrations is not always apparent, and the book would benefit from notes and captions that make their purposes more explicit. Likewise, the other chapters sometimes refer to material in the Examples and Texts chapter, but no references are included to bring the reader to the additional resources. There is an index, but it is not as detailed as one would hope for. The book may be hampered by the conformance to the standard structure of the Greenwood Folklore Handbooks series. Although the discrete sections are useful, the overall effect of the book is rather fragmented. The introduction asserts that each chapter should stand on its own and that the book is not inherently meant to be read from beginning to end; that characteristic, while laudable, would be improved by better internal references throughout and deeper indexing. The book also suffers from some weak editing. The text includes passing reference to some technical terms (e.g. “emic”) that are poorly glossed and contribute little to the reader's understanding. At least one parenthetical citation is not matched by any entry in either the chapter bibliography or the general bibliography for the book. These flaws suggest a lack of editorial vision that one hopes will not characterize the Greenwood series as a whole.
There appears to be no single target audience for this book. Some of the material is aimed at those with no knowledge of anthropology or folklore; other material would be very useful to experienced researchers, especially those new to the study of the Caribbean, or those who study other aspects of Caribbean culture but want a framework for understanding the role of folklore and folklore studies in other studies of the region. Though the book could be stronger and more tightly structured, no other publication covers the variety entry points into the study of Caribbean folklore so broadly and accessibly. This book is suitable for most academic libraries, and recommended for libraries that support some facet of Caribbean area studies. One suggestion for future editions of this book: so much of the folklore of the Caribbean is related or contextualized in music and story‐telling; an audio CD including both oral and musical performances would be a welcome enrichment to the text.
