Joe Hayes

The resident storyteller at Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Joe Hayes, 64, also performs at elementary schools around the state and beyond. Hayes has published 24 bilingual children’s books, including his newest, Baila, Nana, Baila / Dance, Nana, Dance (Cinco Puntos Press, 2008), a collection of Cuban folktales in Spanish and English. Now living in Arroyo Hondo, he grew up in small-town Arizona, where his many Mexican-American friends told him folktales that contained some important lessons, as Wolf Schneider finds out.

Q: You moved to northern New Mexico in 1976?

A: Yes, I moved to Pojoaque, to teach English at the high school in Los Alamos.

Your stories are based on Hispanic and Native American legends, as well as your imagination. What elements must a good children’s story have?

Stories for telling have to have an element of wonder or surprise that grabs the imagination. They have to be relatively simple and linear. I tell them to 5- to 11-year-olds. The longest story I do is 25 minutes.

Your book La Llorona / The Weeping Woman, about a spirit who wanders riverbanks searching for the children she killed, has sold close to 100,000 copies. What’s made it so successful?

La Llorona is such a classic, and so widely known. There’s a fascination about it. There are many ballads and stories about a mother who kills her children. [In New Mexico,] all the children fear she’s nearby.

What’s the moral of La Llorona? Think before you act?

The way I tell it, it condemns arrogance, especially excessive pride in one’s beauty. Another message is that the girl didn’t listen to her grandmother. It condemns hubris and personal pride, like a Greek myth.

How long have you been the resident storyteller at the Wheelwright Museum?

This will be my 28th summer. I’m there on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

How did you transition from teaching to storytelling?

I started telling stories to my kids because my dad told me stories. I got divorced, and my kids moved to California with their mom. I started sending them cassettes of stories, and finding stories to tell them when they visited. I starting developing my renditions of Southwest stories and visiting schools. Then people said, “Why aren’t you publishing the stories?” So I started doing that. Probably 99 percent of the work I do is in elementary schools.

Your books are way simpler than the Harry Potter series, but maybe J. K. Rowling is an influence.

No. It’s grand that she’s so successful, but her stories are far too complex for telling.

How has living in New Mexico influenced your writing and storytelling?

The cultural mix of New Mexico really gave shape to my storytelling. Culturally, in the Southwest, you’re looking at Hispanic stories with a little Native American influence.

Do you have any Hispanic or Native blood in your heritage?

Nope.

Your newest book, Dance, Nana, Dance, consists of 13 Cuban folktales that focus on such topics as a bluebird with gold wings, a yam that terrifies a soldier, and an old lady who can dance for days. How does it compare with your earlier books?

In Cuba, you’re looking at European and African influences. The bluebird story is European. The old lady dancing for fire is African.

And the morals?

One of the most universal morals is that things are going to turn out OK, that good people—courageous people, clever people—will save the day. You have to believe that to keep going.

In 2010, you’re publishing The Love-Sick Skunk, which is about . . . ?

It’s a tall tale. It’s about horrible, stinky tennis shoes and going camping, and a skunk comes along and falls in love with my shoes. There isn’t a moral. The potential learning is the delight in using your imagination.

With publishers all cutting back, what’s the key to staying afloat as a writer these days?

If I had to rely on just royalties, I wouldn’t make a living. A lot of young-adult authors do what I do: make personal appearances in schools.

Why is storytelling important?

I think the greatest contribution you can make with storytelling is that it really builds a sense of community. The tellers and listeners work together, and when we share a story, it removes barriers of strangeness.

Wolf Schneider has been editor in chief of the Santa Fean, editor of Living West, and consulting editor for Southwest Art.

 

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