Introduction

I begin with an introductory case study. A historical portrait of Jlao, a small community in Liberia, sets the context for a discussion of the ways in which representations of pastness are produced there. I then look at the occasions on which past events are evoked, the qualifications of the tellers, and the genres in which they work. I conclude with an account of the histories of Sieh Jeto and his narrative art.

Anyone who makes comparisons from different languages or cultures faces the difficulty that audiences may need a lot of background knowledge if they are to appreciate why an example is significant. Insiders have this knowledge; it's the outsiders who have to make explicit what insiders take for granted. And it's a common paradox that the more knowledge you bring to data the richer your interpretation, the more new information you can elicit. Just because Jlao was a foreign culture to me, I had to bring together as many sources as I could to understand it: contemporary social detail from observation and informants, historical information from oral historians and conventional documents.

I have therefore to begin by offering an interpretation of the Jlao past which has been formed by the very practices that I wish to identify and discuss later in the book.