Storybooks

Abstract: After a 30-min break following the tutorials, we will resume the session with a presentation by Jeremías Salazar (UCSB / MICOP), Martín Gabriel Ruiz (UCSB / MICOP), Eric W. Campbell (UCSB), Guillem Belmar (UCSB), Maya Wax Cavallaro (UCSC), John Duff (UCSC), Raul Diaz Robles (UCSC), Delaney Gomez-Jackson (UCSC), Claire Miller Willahan (UCSC), and Mykel Loren Brinkerhoff (UCSC). Printed storybooks are a relatively simple produce that linguists and field methods classes can help create without the need for external funding. Investment in terms of time is also limited. While it may take a team as long as two hours to transcribe, translate, and review one minute of language use (verifying tones, considering alternate translations, etc), and thus as many as 10 hours to transcribe a 5-minute text, creating a stable presentational outcome of the work takes relatively little time and technical expertise.

Stories can present specific grammar lessons or focus on daily life, folklore, etc. and encourage Indigenous self-representation. These books can be very powerful tools for the community, be it as materials for adult language learning, or for encouraging family language and cultural transmission. In diaspora communities, where language shift is often more accentuated and access to language materials is typically extremely low, such storybooks can help foster the multilingual repertoire of the community while emphasizing the importance of maintaining one’s own language and culture.

In this 25-minute presentation, followed by a 5-minute Q&A session, we will discuss the ways in which our field methods classes have produced storybooks. All of these courses emphasized community outcomes and required the creation of materials for the community as an assignment. At UCSC, some students chose to continue fieldwork on Santiago Laxopa Zapotec after the completion of the course. Those travelling to Oaxaca have been developing storybooks with and for the language community in Laxopa. First, community members living in California collaborated with UCSC graduate students to create sample books. These were presented to the community in Oaxaca in July 2022 as part of a community writing workshop.

At UCSB, one option for the community outcomes assignment was the editing of a trilingual storybook, from an oral story produced, recorded, transcribed, and translated in class. Several of these have been created for Sà'án Sàvǐ ñà Yukúnanǐ, as well as for P’urhépecha from Comachuén. In addition, we are currently working with six Indigenous illustrators from Oaxaca (Mixtec and Triqui) to re-edit the books and launch the collection Ka’vi Sà'án Sàvǐ (Lee en mixteco – Read in Mixtec) as both physical books and audiobooks available online.