Preface
The World Oral Literature Series was established to serve two primary goals. First, by publishing in a range of innovative digital platforms, the series would challenge and change the shape, format and reach of academic publishing to connect important scholarship with a distributed global readership. Launched in 2012 with a new edition of Ruth Finnegan's discipline-defining Oral Literature in Africa, and celebrating its ninth volume with this publication, the breadth and quality of the scholarship in this series has made the study of Indigenous oral literature and oral traditions more visible. Second, a consequence of the approach to knowledge distribution taken by the World Oral Literature Series and our partners at Open Book is the amplification of innovative and collaborative publishing partnerships involving Indigenous intellectuals that more traditional academic imprints have been less able to support. Janet Hujon's beautiful translation of Soso Tham's The Old Days of the Khasis so fittingly entitled Tales of Darkness and Light-realizes both of our goals with a gentle grace and formidable literary power.
Dr. Hujon is a writer and member of the Khasi community, an Indigenous and notably matrilineal ethnic group who have long inhabited what are now the states of Meghalaya and Assam in north eastern India. Born in Shillong, Meghalaya, Hujon first took a Master's Degree in English Literature from the North Eastern Hill University and then a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of London. A versatile writer and original poet, Dr. Hujon's work has appeared in publications across Asia, North America and Europe. A self-identified inhabitant of two distinct if intersecting cultures-England and her original Khasi homeland-Janet Hujon is superbly well positioned to have taken on this ambitious project: conveying the subtlety of Soso Tham's timeless poetry to a global audience in English.
Described by Khasi writer and translator Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih as the "uncrowned, though acknowledged, poet laureate of the Khasis" in 2006, Soso Tham demonstrated his literary acumen and versatility through an important body of work that is narrated, sung and spoken by Khasis to this day, almost 80 years after his death.
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