Mark Bender is professor of Asian languages and literatures at Ohio State University. He is the author of Plum and Bamboo: China's Suzhou Chantefable Tradition (University of Illinois Press, 2003); translator of Butterfly Mother: Miao (Hmong) Creation Epics from Guizhou, China (Hackett, 2007); cotranslator of Hmong Oral Epics (Guizhou Nationalities Press, 2012); and coeditor of Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Culture (Columbia University Press, 2011).Wuwu Aku :

Aku Wuwu is professor and associate dean of the College of Yi Studies, Southwest Nationalities University, Chengdu. The best-known poet among the Nuosu, his work has been published in journals and edited volumes such as Manoa, Ratapallax, Cha, and Basalt. His collection of Nuosu- and Chinese-language poems, Tiger Traces, was published in a trilingual edition (Foreign Language Publications, Ohio State University, 2006).Zopqu Jjivot :

Jjivot Zopqu is a local tradition-bearer in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan.Harrell Stevan :

Stevan Harrell is professor emeritus of anthropology and environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington. He is the author of Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China (University of Washington Press, 2001) and An Ecological History of Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2023); and editor of the University of Washington Press book series Studies on Ethnic Groups in China.

Mark Bender is professor of East Asian languages and literatures at Ohio State University. He is the author of Plum and Bamboo: China’s Suzhou Chantefable Tradition and translator of Butterfly Mother: Miao (Hmong) Creation Epics from Guizhou, China. Aku Wuwu is a well-known poet and professor and associate dean of the College of Yi Studies, Southwest Nationalities University, Chengdu. Jjivot Zopqu is a local tradition-bearer in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan.

"Poetic in form, the narrative provides insights into how a clan- and caste-based society organizesitself, dictates ethics, relates to other ethnic groups, and adapts to a harsh environment."

"[R]emarkable book...presents a world apart from “Western” worldviews but at the same time inspires the readers to reflect on and understand other worldviews and to scrutinize our own."

"[A]n outstanding success...will undoubtedly be an essential primary source for scholars of Yi studies."

"The two scholars are perfect collaborators. Between them, they found a rare version of the epic written in the Yi script, produced an accurate translation, and added to it a comprehensive and insightful introductory treatise to Yi culture."

"An extremely important work that fills a major gap in the literature on a prominent Indigenous group in Southwest China and contributes to the scholarship on the folk, religious, and epic traditions of China."—Katherine Swancutt, author of Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination

"This translation is a treasure: a window into one of China’s richest indigenous traditions. After many centuries of momentous change and political upheaval in the vast empire that surrounds it, Nuosu culture remains alive and remarkably well in its rugged heartland of Liángshān. It also remains remarkably complex, maintaining a working script and written literature of its own side by side with a deep-rooted oral tradition. We are all now indebted to the Nuosu elder Jjivot Zopqu, the Nuosu poet Aku Wuwu, and the American scholar Mark Bender for sharing what they know of this beleaguered and beautiful world."—Robert Bringhurst, author of A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World

“Hnewo” in the Nuosu language means “passed down through mouth and ears.” This long narrative poem from the Nuosu Yi people in the Cool Mountains of Southwestern Sichuan is an intimate part of their ritual life; combined with the kenre practice of verbal dueling it is a feature of the rites of passage of these mountain people—weddings, funerals, and the ceremony to send souls of the dead back to the ancestors. Recited in these ritual contexts, the epic embodies Yi people’s cognitive and emotional experience of the cycle of human life and of people’s place in the larger natural world and cosmos. Jjivot Zopqu has provided a precious resource for the world of folklore studies, while Mark Bender and Aku Wuwu have done a great service by translating this epic and introducing it to the English-reading public.—Bamo Qubumo, Senior Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and co-author of Mountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China