Obituary – help us find one? Though here is an image shared.
Celebration of Life through Zoom (2 hours)
Cap’s Off to You Blog Post – posted November 5, 2021
Do you have memories of Wajuppa? Please email to info@storycrossroads.org.
Video below: Wajuppa Tossa and Margaret Read MacDonald tell Two Goats on a Bridge (first half). In English and Lao, 2008.
Video Below: Wajuppa Tossa tells Bakkham the Great Cat, 2020.
Video Below: A tribute to Dr. Wajuppa Tossa from the Korean International Storytelling Festival. Opens with Ajan Wajuppa singing her traditional Wai Khru to her teachers, with which she opened all storytelling performances.
Sharing some memories:
I got to know Wajuppa 20 years ago when she was invited to perform in Singapore. She came across as a calm, gentle, warm soul, always caring for the university students she taught and championing for the revival of the language spoken in N.E. Thailand. She collected folktales from the elders around her area and when she organized the International Storytelling Festival, invited them to perform! She has mentored many, not just in Thailand but also in Bangladesh, South Korea, Vietnam and more. She was famous for lugging her rice cooker with organic rice grown by her relative to whichever storyteller event she attended and many of us have shared her breakfast, accompanied by delicious condiments with her! She will be sorely missed but never forgotten. –details from Kiran Shah from Australian Storytelling Guild, NSW
In 1995 Dr. Wajuppa Tossa asked me to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship to come teach storytelling techniques at Maharasakham University. She wanted me to train her English Language majors to tell local folktales in Lao and then travel to nineteen provinces in Isaan to share tales with elementary schools. She was concerned that the Lao language and traditions were being lost and overrun by Bangkok Thai. A graduate student translated tales from Thai or Lao into English for me. I retold them in a tellable format and Ajan Wajuppa translated them into Lao. Then we tandem taught them to our students. Wajuppa picked up on the techniques of storytelling immediately and trained a corps of student storytellers each year. Wajuppa spurred storytelling throughout SE Asia, inviting young tellers from Indonesia, The Philippines, Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore to Mahasarakham for festivals and traveling to their countries to participate in festivals they went home to sponsor. She leaves behind an amazing legacy of thriving storytelling throughout the SE Asia, India, Bangladesh and Korea. As a result of her drawing together of these folks, the Federation of East Asian Storytellers (FEAST) was formed. —A remembrance of Dr. Wajuppa Tossa by Margaret Read MacDonald
Picture Above: Wajuppa Tossa (far right) and Margaret Read MacDonald tandem tell (English and Lao) with Balinese tellers Gede Tamada and his father, the legendary teller Made Taro.
Dr. Wajuppa Tossa. Dies 2021. Age 71. Born Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.
EDUCATION: Ph.D (English and American Literature), with Distinction. Drew University, Madison, New Jersey 07940, 1986. Dissertation, “Phadaeng Nang Ai: A Translation of a Thai-Isan Folk Epic In Verse,” published by Bucknell University Press, 1
POSITION: Associate Professor of English and American Literature, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand.
IMPORTANT WORK IN FOLKTALE EPIC PRESERVATION:
Dr. Wajuppa Tossa worked with monks at rural temples in Isaan, who translated folk epics from ancient palm leaf manuscripts written in an archaic script. Most important of these monk scholars was Pra Inta Kaweewong of Roi Et, a neighboring province to Mahasarakham. She describes his work in detail in her introduction to Kaew Na Ma. I believe he also was the source of Kamphra Phi Noi.
Monk scholars translated the epics from old palm leaf manuscripts conserved in their temples.
She translated these into contemporary Lao and then into English. Two have been published. Two are placed in the archives of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University.
Her first publication, Phadaeng Nang Ai is set in an attempt to replicate the poetic form klong san, which features secondary rhymes within each line. She skillfully shows how the line would be broken in a Lao rendition. Unfortunately critiques felt this made the English stilted, so she abandoned this format for her future translations.
Phya Khankhaak, The Toad King: A Translation of an Isan Fertility Myth into English Verse, by Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1996
Phya Daeng Nang Ai: a Translation of a Thai/Isan Folk Epic in Verse Bucknell University Press, 1990
Kaew Na Ma (The Horse-faced Girl) (manuscript, deposited with Indiana University Folklore Library)
Khampra Phi Noi (The Little Ghost) manuscript, deposited with Indiana University Folklore Library).
A Related Anecdote: I had retold the tale of Chet Huat Chet Hai (a Thai hero who travels and meets remarkable companions who can pull a hundred carts, cut a thousand bamboos, etc.). One day a lady remarked that this was also a folk opera (mo lam)…and that by the way, the temple where the story happened was nearby in Roi Et Province. So, of course, we drove off to discover this wat, and after much wandering found ourselves driving into a wat courtyard where enormous statues of Chet Huat Chet Hai and his companions stood. The abbot came out to greet us and pointed into the forest to the spot where these companions had pulled up the giant chingrit bug…the hole it came out of was still there! Then he took us into his office and unwrapped a precious old palm leaf manuscript, lit a candle, and holding it over the manuscript, read for us a few leaves of the epic.
We were pleased to learn that he had a Lao translation of the ancient language of the ms for sale.
ADDITIONAL SELECTED PUBLICATIONS OF Wajuppa TOSSA
Buddhist Storytelling in Thailand and Laos, The Vessantara Jataka Scroll at Asian Civilization Museum, co-authors Drs.Leedom Lefferts and Sandra Cate, Singapore, 2012
“Engendering Cultural Pride Through Storytelling” by Margaret Read MacDonald and Wajuppa Tossa, in The Arts, Education, and Social Change: Little Signs of Hope. Mary Clare Powell and Vivien Marcow Speiser, editors. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
Isaan Folklore. In World Folklore Encyclopedia, Arkansas State University, AR, USA. Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. December 2006
Lao Folktales. With Kongdeuane Nettavong, edited by Margaret Read MacDonald. CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
“The Siang Performance in Isaan” and “Storytelling: A Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture” by Wajuppa Tossa in Traditional Storytelling Today: An International Sourcebook by Margaret Read MacDonald. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999.