Diane Wolkstein – a life of stories

The American storyteller, author and folklorist Diane Wolkstein died suddenly on January 31st . She was in Taiwan translating the great Chinese epic ‘Monkey King or Journey to the West’. She died doing what she loved. It is hard to believe that Diane has gone. She had a far reaching impact on the whole world of storytelling, and her work and collections of stories have inspired many tellers.

I first met Diane when Ben Haggarty brought her to the UK for his second International Storytelling Festival in 1987. Diane performed the Sumerian epic ‘Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth’. She had spent years working with archeologist Samuel Noah Kramer, creating a translation of the epic that is fresh and vivid. She lived the stories that she chose to tell, digging into them deeply. She travelled the world to meet the cultures and the tellers who carried the stories, translating stories from their source. This dedicated work led to wonderful books and articles. I was inspired by an article she wrote for Parabola Magazine about Wayang Kulit shadow puppetry in Bali,  where she described in detail the creative work of the puppeteer. Most will remember her collection ‘The Magic Orange Tree’ which inspired Ben to contact Diane in the first place.  This book came out of many visits Diane made to Haiti, where she recorded stories, spoke to tellers, and wrote about the context of storytelling performances at late-night gatherings. Many, many UK storytellers tell stories from this book, and some perhaps don’t even know that the story they love comes from this source. Perhaps they heard the tale from TUUP, Ben or Hugh Lupton? Maybe you tell: ‘Bouki dances the kokioko’; ‘Papa God and General Death’; ‘The monkey who asked for misery’; ‘Oh my darling come to mama’; ‘The magic orange tree’?  These stories have all been given to us by Diane’s dedicated work collecting and sharing.

In 2003 I was honoured to be asked by Radio 4 to make a programme, ‘Tales from the statue’ about Diane Wolkstein, and the Hans Christian Anderson statue in New York’s Central Park. Diane programmed a regular summer storytelling event beneath the statue since the 1960’s. For the radio programme Diane said, “Now, when I first began, it was so different, because eighty per cent of the audience were children. And the fathers would come with their pipes and cigars and New York Times, and they would sit and read their newspapers, while their wife was getting their hair done. And slowly I asked them to put their papers down, and politely I asked them to not smoke during the storytelling, and then I noticed how interested they actually were in the stories. And then over the years the audience completely changed. So now it’s nearly eighty per cent adults!”

Diane has left behind her a vast legacy of collections of stories. She leads the way for the kind of devoted work storytellers need to be engaged with. At the end of the programme Diane said, “That’s what’s so precious about the storyteller speaking, it’s the voice telling you something so important, and you have to follow that thread. Because there’s the drama and excitement, and how will it end, then you follow through, and that kind of builds muscles, interior muscles. This is how we learn about life’s struggles.” She is remembered all over the world.