In an illustrious career spanning over forty years, Américo Paredes has often set the standard for scholarship and writing in folklore and Chicano studies. In folklore, he has been in the vanguard of important theoretical and methodological movements. In Chicano studies, he stands as one of the premier exponents.

Paredes's books are widely known and easily available, but his scholarly articles are not so familiar or accessible. To bring them to a wider readership, Richard Bauman has selected eleven essays that eloquently represent the range and excellence of Paredes's work. The hardcover edition of Folklore and Culture was published in 1993. This paperback edition will make the book more accessible to the general public and more practical for classroom use.

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One. The Social Base and the Negotiation of Identity
  • 1. The Folklore of Groups of Mexican Origin in the United States [1979]
  • 2. The Problem of Identity in a Changing Culture: Popular Expressions of Culture Conflict along the Lower Rio Grande Border [1978]
  • 3. Folk Medicine and the Intercultural jest [1968]
  • 4. On Ethnographic Work among Minority Groups: A Folklorist's Perspective [1977]
• Part Two. The Folklore Genres: History, Form, and Performance
  • 5. Some Aspects of Folk Poetry [1964]
  • 6. The Mexican Corrido: Its Rise and Fall [1958]
  • 7. The Concept of the Emotional Core Applied to the Mexican Corrido "Benjamin Argumedo" [1972]
  • 8. José Mosqueda and the Folklorization of Actual Events [1973]
  • 9. The United States, Mexico, and Machismo [1971]
  • 10. The Décima on the Texas-Mexican Border: Folksong as an Adjunct to Legend [1966]
  • 11. The Undying Love of "El Indio" Córdova: Décimas and Oral History in a Border Family [1987]
• Notes
• Bibliography: The Scholarly Writings of Américo Paredes