More Best-Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival (review)

of her powers, and she chooses to use those powers to build community. She believes strongly in holistic social programs—educational, community service, and economic development—which make sense in the community, link tradition to progress, and develop self-sufficiency, self-esteem, and pride in heritage. From Roots to Roses is the story of how a woman and her community have learned to build social, economic, and educational programs which connect cultural heritage and traditional skills with current social and economic needs. They have learned how to build programs which draw upon many resources but which remain community-based. They have learned some powerful ways to begin to rebuild and heal communities which have been disenfranchised for a long time. The final layer of meaning, for me, in this story is as a counterpoint to Denise Giardina's books, Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth. Unlike most of the characters in Giardina's books, Tilda Kemplen has not been destroyed by the hardships imposed on her community by the coal industry. When I say this, I am in no way denying the truth in Giardina's books. They are works of fiction full of truth, but they are the story of the tragedy of coal. From Roots to Roses is the story of personal and community survival of the tragedy of coal. Tilda Kemplen's message and the program models she and others have developed in her area are signs of real hope in Appalachia today. —Diana Hays More Best-Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival. Jonesboro, Tennessee: The National Storytelling Press, 1992. This book is part of a set of two published to honor the twentieth anniversary of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. I have to confess this sequel isn't as good as the first volume in the series, which has already been reviewed in this magazine (Summer 1992). Ifyou can only purchase one of the books, buy Best-Loved Stories instead of this one. Having said that, I still recommend this book to everyone interested in oral storytelling. More Best-Loved Stories contains thirty-nine tales, two more than its companion . Some of the stories are classics: it's pretty hard to grow up Southern, for example, without having heard Jerry Clower's "A Coon-Huntin' Story." Some others are from tellers included in the first volume (David Holt, Ray Hicks, Jackie Torrence, and Donald Davis). And some are from tellers seeing their first time in print. Ail demonstrate that particular human need to spin 66 narrative—it is what distinguishes us from the other animals, says Jane Yolen in her introduction, "more clearly than the opposable thumb." The storytellers represent a number of traditions, although the names I've mentioned so far all happen to be Southerners and all but Clower make use of Appalachian folk material. But storytelling is a universal art, and it does us good to hear tales from other parts of the world—if for no other reason than to demonstrate the truth of an observation made in the preface. "When we engage in open-hearted listening and telling," the author of the preface writes, "we experience the truth that what we hold in common runs far deeper than all that divides us." For that reason I'm sure readers will enjoy some of these stories from other traditions. Waddie Mitchell, for example, is a cowboy poet who tells his yarn in rhyming couplets. Peninnah Schräm repeats an "Elijah" story from the Jewish oral tradition. Duncan Williamson presents a long and beautifully crafted tale that originated in the western isles of Scotland. I suspect you will enjoy these and other non-Appalachian stories as much as I did. But as in the first volume, the Appalachian tales more than hold their own. Lee Pennington is probably well known to readers of this magazine because of his poetry and his work with Louisville's Corn Island storytelling festival. He tells here a ghost story, the usual Saturday night feature at storytelling affairs in our festival. The story doesn't have a whole lot of redeeming social significance , but it probably can really raise an audience's hackles if...