Reading Challenge Update: Folklore

I started my next book for the challenge yesterday and I am enjoying it so much! I am reading Margaret Atwood's Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories, in which the title plays on the famous story of Bluebeard, the wealthy man who murdered his wives. Atwood's collection, however, explores the folklore of our individual lives. In the two stories I finished, a woman remembers her mother's favorite family stories. I loved these stories because Atwood creates colorful characters that are unique, yet could be found in any family. Every family has classic stories that everyone knows and loves to hear (or hates) over and over at holidays or reunions.

The matriarch of these stories recounts tales from her own youth as well as those of her children. Family stories are fascinating because they reveal so much about our individual roots and how we fit into the fabric of history. In family folklore, who owns the story? Is everyone in the family his or her own bard of the family story? Folklore is often an oral history and Atwood's method of a mother telling and re-telling family tales serves as a perfect framing device in Bluebeard's Egg. In addition to Atwood's interesting repositioning of folklore, some of the anecdotes in both "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" and "Hurricane Hazel" are hilarious, leaving me chuckling to myself on the train into work. My personal favorite:

"If my mother had any reservations about being left alone on a remote farm with a three-year-old, no telephone, no car, no electricity, and only me for help, she didn't state them. She had been in such situations before, and by that time she must have been used to them. Whatever was goign on she treated as normal; in the middle of crises, such as cars stuck up to their axles in mus, she would suggest we sing a song." (27)

For some reason this image reminds me of Cheaper by the Dozen about the large Gilbreth family and my own mother reading it aloud to me and my brother, laughing through each silly incident. Families all have their eccentricities, but the families who know how to turn them into fun stories and personalized folklore know how to make life interesting.

Do you have great family folklore? Share it with candid culture by posting in the comments section or emailing ireadcandidculture@gmail.com. We'd love to hear your crazy family stories and maybe we'll share some of ours!

- KER