Cuentos from My Childhood: Legends and Folktales of Northern New Mexico: A Bilingual Edition

This attractive collection is divided into: Legends, including Supernatural legends, Religious legends, and a single Historical legend, and Folktales, including Universal folktales, Cautionary tales, and a single Humorous tale. This bilingual edition doesn't follow the usual "facing page" format, instead putting the English translations first with the Spanish originals following. An innovation I would like to see picked up by other compilers of such works, as it seems to me distracting to have text and translation within eyeshot of each other. Both the English and Spanish texts are written in a straightforward style, poetic in the manner of oral lore. The Spanish was direct enough to be comprehensible to this non-native speaker. How far it corresponds to the actual speech of representative tellers I cannot judge. My only criticism would be the lack of notes, unfortunately common enough in popular publishings of folklore (but good grief, this is produced by the "Museum of New Mexico Press"!). Folklore arises from a people who have their own assumptions and idiosyncracies, and to the shame of America, this culture, whose antecedents predate much of the European invasion, is not well known away from the immediate locality. Further, many of these tales occur in many significant variants. For example, dig about in collections of Southwest Hispanic or Mexican folklore, and you will encounter many radically different takes on La Llorona, the Weeping Woman. The text included in this book is more or less suitable for reading before mixed company, but some of the others, wow! Over the whole, though, an enjoyable and edifying book.