| Summary: | Edited by Tad Tuleja. Includes bibliographical references. In Usable Pasts, fourteen authors examine the manipulation of traditional expressions among a variety of groups from the United States and Canada: the development of a pictorial style by Navajo weavers in response to traders, Mexican American responses to the appropriation of traditional foods by Anglos, the expressive forms of communication that engender and sustain a sense of community in an African American women's social club and among elderly Yiddish folksingers in Miami Beach, the incorporation of mass media images into the C & Ts (customs and traditions) of a Boy Scout troop, the changing meaning of their defining Exodus-like migration to Mormons, Newfoundlanders' appropriation through the rum-drinking ritual called the Schreech-In of outsiders' stereotypes, outsiders' imposition of the once-despised lobster as the emblem of Maine, the contest over Texas's heroic Alamo legend and its departures from historical fact, and how yellow ribbons were transformed from an image in a pop song to a national symbol of "resolve".--Provided by publisher. Through Navajo eyes: pictorial weavings from Spider Woman's loom / Nancy Peake -- Appropriation and counterhegemony in south Texas: food slurs, offal meats, and blood / Mario Montano -- Dyngus Day in Polish American communities / Deborah Anders Silverman -- "May the work I've done speak for me": African American women as speech community / Jerrilyn McGregory -- "Giving" of Yiddish folksongs as a cultural resource / Joel Saxe -- Newell's paradox redux / Jay Mechling -- Historical narrative in the martial arts: a case study / Thomas A. Green -- Pioneers and recapitulation in Mormon popular historical expression / Eric A. Eliason -- "Up here, we never see the sun": homeplace and crime in urban Appalachian narratives / John R. Williams -- Booze, ritual, and the invention of tradition: the phenomenon of the Newfoundland Screech-In / Pat Byrne -- Shell games in vacationland: Homarus Americanus and the state ...
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