The reluctant folklorist: Jon Y. Lee, Paul Radin, and the fieldwork process

In the early 1930s, the anthropologist Paul Radin hired Jon Lee to collect Chinese American folk narratives in Oakland's Chinatown. These were later published as The Golden Mountain: Chinese Tales Told in California. Despite being lead field-worker for the project, Lee's contributions have been largely overlooked. This paper examines Lee's important folkloristic work and opens up a wider discussion about the role that professional aspirations play in shaping the field methodologies of folklorists. Keywords: AFS ETHNOGRAPHIC THESAURUS: Folklorists, fieldwork, professionalism, ethnicity
'I WAS GLAD,' ZORA NEALE HURSTON WROTE in her 1935 work Mules and Men, 'when somebody told me, 'you may go and collect Negro folk-lore'' (Hurston 1995:9). Part of her [...]