Finding the Center

This second edition features three new Zuni stories, updated transcriptions of stories from the original edition, a bibliography, and a new preface and introduction.

“A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry . . . Tedlock’s Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments.”—Newsweek, “[An] extraordinarily impressive collection.”—New York Times Book Review, “A genuine artistic breakthrough . . . Recapture[s] for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also . . . at least some feeling of what it’s like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs can’t seem to tell us. . . . I know of no other retellings of traditional tales that move me to delight as these do.”—Harper’s Magazine, Tedlock’s book introduces into folklore an attempt to create a verbal notation of the speech dynamics of the original narrators. . . . The realization comes over one with a shock that our infatuation with story has, for all these years, obliterated all but the most rudimentary considerations of style.”—American Anthropologist

Dennis Tedlock is James H. McNulty Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His books include Breath on the Mirror: Mythic Voices and Visions of the Living Maya.