ABSTRACT
The popular familiarity with classic EuroAmerican ma¨rchen has also created more awareness for magic tales told as part of the living traditions of recent Asian, Middle Eastern, and African immigrants. The Bay Area Storytelling Festival near San Francisco, for instance, features performers from Chinese and West African communities whose stories include ma¨rchen themes of magical bodily members, flights, and transformations. Documentation projects by folklorists with new immigrant communities as well as longstanding regional-ethnic groups reveal the enduring appeal of ma¨rchen in various cultures and the social and psychological functions they perform in folklife.
