Never again I: Death and beauty in Yaqui stories.

Abstract

This study explores the role of the Yaqui storyteller and the themes of death and beauty in Yaqui stories. Memory and voice bind together the past and present experience of the Yaqui. Theirs is an oral tradition filled with the tragedy and conquests of war, deportation, fragmentation and endurance, of love, witchcraft and cruelty, magic and ceremony. Ancestors are evoked as their adventures are recounted. The eight sacred towns, Ume Wohnaiki Pweplum, are transported, through stories, from the Rio Yaqui in Sonora, Mexico to the barrios and villages of southern Arizona, and a link is maintained between ancient origins and new beginnings. The history of the people, the Yoeme, is preserved, continued, and reinvented through stories.