Description: Winner of the American Folklore Society's Chicago Folklore Prize, Yaqui Deer Songs/Maso Bwikam offers a fascinating discussion of the Deer Song tradition in Yaqui culture, with authentic ceremonial songs transcribed in both Yaqui and English.
Review Quotes: "Ranks among the finest works of its kind."--American Indian Quarterly
"In both form and content, Yaqui Deer Songs is one of the most beautiful anthropological books of recent years. It stands as part of the great tradition of collaborative work flowing from Boas and Teit, in which oral literature is presented, preserved, and sensitively translated."--Journal of Anthropological Research "A model for others interested in studying across languages and culture. . . . [Readers] will find this book of stories, songs, and photographs a credible account of Yaqui history and ritual."--Choice "The interweaving of ethnological material, personal anecdote and visual imagery gives a reader the sense of witnessing, even participating in, both a ceremony and the life it sanctifies."--San Francisco Chronicle "An important and beautifully produced book, a labor of love as well as of scholarship."--Western Folklore "A book for scholars, aficionados of Yaqui culture, and people who just want a good read."--Journal of the Southwest "As a study of a Native American poetic genre, it is outstanding. The collaboration of Evers, a non-Yaqui specialist in American Indian traditional literature, with Molina, a young Yaqui who speaks his people's language and performs as a deer singer in his own right, makes this a very model of what such studies can and should be."--William Bright in SAIL "This work provides an outstanding break-through . . . a real tour-de-force, extremely well done."--Barre Toelken "Evers and Molina illuminate the subtle mystery of the Deer Songs and provide translations that set a standard for this genre. . . . Clearly this volume makes a permanent contribution to American Indian Literature."--John Bierhorst