Lafcadio Hearn's America: Ethnographic Sketches and Editorials (review)

By editing this volume of Lafcadio Hearn's essays on American culture, Simon Bronner has done a service to several fields, including folklore, cultural history, American literature and American studies. Most of the essays and editorials included herein are short, hard-to-find journalistic pieces that have been out of print for many years. Bronner has carried out thorough research, made a thoughtful selection, and provided an interesting and informative introduction.

Hearn was an idiosyncratic figure whose relative neglect in the United States may be due to the sheer diversity of his achievements and influences. Born in 1850 to a Greek mother and an Irish father, spending much of his early life in poverty, Hearn arrived in the United States at the age of nineteen, eventually landing a job as a reporter with the Cincinnati Enquirer. In 1876, Hearn moved to New Orleans, where he worked as a journalist and writer until he "went native" on a trip to Japan in 1890, staying there until his death in 1904. Adopting a Japanese name (Koizumi Yakumo) and marrying into a Japanese family, Hearn held a chair in English literature at the University of Tokyo, becoming one of the leading authorities of his day on the folklore of Japan and the leading interpreter of Japanese culture to outsiders.

Hearn's American writings are characterized by an interest in and sympathy with the urban poor and the culturally, politically, and economically marginal. Working the ghetto and crime beats for several newspapers (he was fired from the Cincinnati Enquirer for violating miscegenation laws), Hearn's reporting was graphic, even lurid, but at the same time full of remarkable ethnographic detail in his treatment of ethnic minorities, the underclass, the homeless, and "undesirables" such as prostitutes, drug users, rag pickers, and voodoo doctors. He mixed the righteous indignation of reform journalism with Gothic imagery, a keen interest in the supernatural, and a very modern-seeming multiculturalism.

The selections in this volume include abundant examples of Hearn's reportage on crime and violence, but also many essays of more direct interest to folklorists. These include articles focusing of specific neighborhoods or cultural groups, including African American and Jewish ghettos in Cincinnati, Filipino and Sicilian communities in Louisiana, and occupational groups, including fire fighters and steeple climbers; articles based on interviews with specific tradition bearers, including butchers, mediums, and a Cuban fencing master; articles focusing on what folklorists would now call performance events, including nightclub dances and séances; and articles focusing on the folk songs of Cincinnati roustabouts, Louisiana Creole folk speech, and Cincinnati pottery traditions.

The last section of the book is a collection of short editorials dealing with such topics as labor unions, race relations, and the arts. They demonstrate directly the political underpinnings of many of the essays. Hearn's opinions were progressive for his time, although some of his concepts, such as the relationship of culture to race, are long outdated. On the other hand, Hearn was a staunch supporter of immigration and advocated the teaching of ethnic language and culture in schools ("The French in Louisiana"). His populist approach to the arts, his interest in the aesthetic side of "vices" such as gambling, and his descriptions of local variation and parody in the performance of popular culture (e.g., "Music of the Masses") all seem very modern.

Bronner succeeds very well in presenting Hearn to us as an ethnographer. Hearn's achievements, however, go well beyond the ethnographic journalism selected for this book. He published books on specific ethnographic topics, including Creole proverbs and foodways. During his life, he increasingly produced collections of "literary," rewritten folk narratives, especially narratives of the supernatural. Hearn is of interest to folklorists not only as an ethnographer, but also as a literary figure. Always working on the margins, he is a fascinating example of the...