B. Collections of Story and Song in Translation
There is a surprising amount of California oral literature in English translation. Malcolm Margolin's The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs, and Reminiscences is a fine and wide-ranging newer collection, drawn from authentic sources, with enlightening commentary on each selection. Earlier anthologies include Frank Latta's California Indian Folklore and Edward Gi ord and Gwendoline Block's California Indian Nights. Theodora Kroeber's The Inland Whale contains literary reworkings of authentic traditional stories. One of the oldest sources is Jeremiah Curtin's Creation Myths of Primitive America, originally published in 1898 and containing a large body of Yana and Wintu myths. Beyond these, there are quite a number of collections focused on particular tribes and languages: Thomas Blackburn's December's Child: A Book of
Two publications stand out for their pure loveliness as books to have and hold: Mourning Dove, a Yurok/English Tale (a chapbook put out by Heyday Books); and the Yosemite Association's Legends of the Yosemite Miwok, edited by Frank LaPena, Craig D. Bates, and Steven Medley.
Finally, though they do not focus exclusively on California traditions, the following works incorporate significant California materials: Brian Swann's Song of the Sky and Wearing the Morning Star, which contain the poet's versions of several classic and beautiful California songs; Leanne Hinton and Lucille Watahomigie's Spirit Mountain, which presents bilingual (and occasionally trilingual) versions of Yuman oral literature, including Mojave, Diegueño, Quechan, and Kiliwa; William Bright's A Coyote Reader, which contains translations of Coyote tales from a number of di erent California traditions; and Brian Swann's mammoth anthology Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America, which includes selections from Yana, Karuk, Atsugewi, and Maidu.