""When I moved to northern New Mexico thirty-three years ago," writes John Nichols, "I immediately fell in with my neighbors and commenced laughing." As folklorist Nasario Garcia explains in the introduction to this collection, falling in with the voices of laughter and comic relief is a timeless, vital aspect of Hispanic culture. Chistes! brings together for the first time in English and regional Spanish a medley of orally gathered humorous anecdotes from northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, a collection that captures the comic and mischievous soul of a people and, ultimately, the serious soul as well. The chistes range in form from practical jokes, pranks, slips-of-the-tongue, hyperbole, solecisms, slapstick, and double entendres."--BOOK JACKET.