Author Archives: Shirley He

La Llorona

Background of informant:

My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

 

Main piece:

AG: “The story that I know about her is that, she was with a man and they had children together. And for some reason, she became crazy. Either because of the guy, or just because of herself [in a questioning tone]. Let’s say, I don’t really know why. Because of that, uhh, she went crazy and she drowned her kids in the river. And then when she realized what she did, she wanted the kids back. But she couldn’t so she killed herself, thinking that she could reunited with them. But when she went to heaven, because she committed suicide, she couldn’t get into heaven and had to find her kids back. So she came back to earth and she’s like [pause] damned. Just wandering on the street looking for her children. And then like, what she said, was like ‘Where’s my kids?’, ‘¿Dónde estás Mi hijo?’”

 

SH: Is this sentence always a part when people tell this story?

 

AG: “Yes, cause you learned as a kid…like… [pause] I think I learned from some older cousin and they were trying to scare the younger kids. And cause you are little, so its like “no you can’t follow us, cause La Llorona will come and she’ll be like ‘¿Dónde estás Mi hijo?’ [in a different tone] and she’ll take you!” Cause you’re kid so she’ll think that you were hers kid. ”

 

AG: “Surprisingly, a lot of adults, [pause], kind of believe in it. Cause like, my uncle claimed that he heard her and seen her. But a weird thing about Latin American, especially Mexican, is that they can be very superstitious. […] People claim that every time when you’re sleeping and hear a crying outside, “Oh, that’s Llorona!” And when you wake up, you’ll just have discussion with your family, like, “I heard, I heard La Llorona last night.” So it’s like in certain situation, we talk about supernatural stuffs.”

 

Context of the performance:

AG and I were discussing on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo in a writing class. When we were close reading the scene when the female character jumps into SF Bay to kill her self, she told me this really reminds her of a story she heard when she was young. And she started to talk to me about this story and it turns out that this female character in Vertigo shares many similarities with La Llorona.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

This piece was performed after I first knew about La Llorona’s story on ANTH 333 lecture. Not only is the content of the piece slightly different from the version that I heard of, the context when my informant learned about this piece is also different. Instead of being told by parents to kids, or among young women (as what we’ve discussing on class), AG was told by her older cousins to scare her in order to prevent her from following them.

 

For another version of this legend, see Vertigo (1958).

Qing Ming Festival

Background of informant:

My informant LWQ is a 47 years old Chinese artist. She was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 36.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main piece:

LWQ: “This is the day that we go to cemetery and pray to the ancestors. In total, there’re four day in a year that people pray to their ancestors, but each day has different name and each of them is different. In winder solstice, that day, it’s the first one. And April 4rth on the lunar Calendar, which is the one that is coming, is called QingMing Festival. Then is July half, also on the lunar Calendar, is the Festival of the Dead. And then is the New Year Eve day. These are the four. There are commons among these four days, that people burn those money made from paper, the money that is only efficient in the ghosts’ world, not our human world.”

SH: What kind of money?

LWQ: “We have a piece of paper in the shape of normal RMB, but the portrait of Mao is changed to the God in the ghost world on the paper. And also, there’re paper money in the shape of ancient Chinese copper coin, which a hole in the center. And also some in the shape of Chinese shoe-shaped gold.”

LWQ: “For the differences of the four days, I think… the most recent one, on April. 4th, we bring some green plants or flowers to the deceased family members tomb. That’s why QingMing festival is also called ‘Tomb-swiping Day’. We need to revitalize the ancestor’s tomb because spring is coming. [laugh] I remember when I was little, I followed my parents to ancestors’ tomb on the day QingMing Festival, and it’s a day to play and enjoy the warm weather for me and my other little friends. Now, I will go to my grandparents tomb on this year’s festival next week, and it is now to me a day to reunion with my family, because my brothers and my parents will be there too.”

 

Context of the performance:

My informant LWQ told me one day that she will travel back to her hometown recently because the QingMing Festival was coming. This conversation was done two weeks before the festival day.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

My informant said that the day of QingMing festival is an official holiday set by the government, so it’s a day off for everyone in China. Respecting to ancestor is always a major focus in Chinese traditional culture, and there’s a huge emphasis on family lineage and bounding between family members. However, this emphasis was neglected once around 1970s in China. Now, for the recent 20 years, the traditional focus on lineage is recollected and reemphasized. Since the festival is highlighted to the public as an official holiday, this is another example of how institution helps revitalize folklore.

Dia de los Muertos

Background of informant:

My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

Main piece:

AG: “I think here in the State when talking about ghost people think of horror films, but for me, I think of deceased family members. In Mexican culture, the dead is not seen as scary as it might be in some other places. Especially, when someone really close to you dies, you kind of want to have a experience to know that their soul is still out there. So ghost for us, of course they are scary, but there’s another connotation to them, because it’s such a big part of our culture. We feel more acceptable to believe in them. Oh, and we even have a whole celebration, the Day of the Dead. ”

SH: What is it?

AG: “We call it ‘Dia de los Muertos’ [AG wrote this down on my note]. It’s every year between October 31st and November 2rd. It’s originally a indigenous festival, cause then the Catholic church said, ‘No, don’t do that’, so they catholicized the festival. The indigenous name is ‘Dia de los Muertos’, which means ‘the Day of the Dead’, but the Catholic church don’t allow them to worship the dead, so they changed it to ‘All Saints Day’. I went to this festival several times here in LA. It’s not a super big festival, since we’re not in Mexico. So you juts build little altar in your home, it’s the day that you remember the deceased. So you just put those orange flowers, called ‘cempasúchi’, that has the smell to attract the dead to their way back home. With a picture of the deceased member on the altar, you put everything that they loved, or anything that reminds you of them on the altar as well. Real food. Or since my grandpa loved soccer, so we put a soccer ball on the altar.

“Here in LA, you can go to some cemetery and it will be parties where you’ll have ‘Mariachi’, which is the ‘Mexican Band’. So you just bring the favorite food of the deceased family member to the party. For example, my grandma loved coffee, so we made her a pot of coffee and put it on his grave. Just anything they loved, we would bring it to their grave.

“This is the day that people believe, that the gap between the living and the dead is the thinnest. So the dead can actually come back to be with the living people. On that day, they are with us. Or they are supposed to be us on that day, in spirit. It’s just a way to make sure that we never forget them. ”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section of the entire conversation about believing in ghost and respecting the dead in Mexican culture.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Recalling the proverb, “The cactus on your forehead”, and the story of La Malinche that my informant AG told me, I observe some similarities among these folk pieces. The importance of the past, the ancestor, and the lineage is always emphasized. Just like what AG said, Mexican people don’t see the dead as scary things but deceased family members that come back to reconnect.

 

A related folklore piece is discussed in a short ethnographic film, “Muerte Querida (Dearest Death)”, by Ileana de Cardenas, USC MVA 2016. This film explores a Mexican folk icon, Santa Muerte, and a community of devotees in East Hollywood. The special attitude about death and toward the dead of Mexican culture is further discussed in this short film.

Description of the film: http://cool939.wixsite.com/mva2016/muerte-querida

To watch the film, you might need to contact the department of Anthropology in USC.

No ivory is there in a dog’s mouth

Title:

My informant LWQ is a 47 years old Chinese artist. She was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 36.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main piece:

Original script: “狗嘴里吐不出象牙。”

Phonic script: “gǒu zuǐlǐ tǔ bù chū xiàng yá.”

Transliteration: “No ivory is there in a dog’s mouth.”

Full translation: “A filthy mouth cannot utter decent language.”

Analysis on the script: Dog is a representation of badness, or vulgarity, while ivory symbolizes objects that are valuable and precious. This idiom is used to describe a person’s speech in sarcasm, that the words from this person are all truthless hogwash.

 

Context of the performance:

My informant LWQ was joking about a conversation between her and her husband. In a jocular manner, she described her husband’s words using this idiom, to express a disagree attitude in her husband’s words.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

It is very interesting that there are so many idioms, proverbs in Chinese about dogs, and without any exception, dogs carries negative meanings in all those folk pieces. In general, dogs represent inferiority, humbleness, degradation, and manifests people who are inferior in morality and status. However, at the same time, though folk pieces about dogs are all negative, they are used in a jocular manner, always being performed in joking, or playful satire. Moreover, I remember by grandmother always call me “狗东西” (phonic script: “gǒu dōng xī”, transliteration: “Dog thing”, translation: “doggie”) where dog is used in a term of endearment. It seems that there’s an ambiguous attitude toward dog among Chinese people.

“el nopal en la frente” and the origin myth of Mexican City

 My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

 

Main piece:

 

Original script: “el nopal en la frente.”

Transliteration: “The cactus on your forehead.”

Full translation: “You merely look Mexican and indigenous.”

 

AG: “I consider myself a “Chicana”, which means someone whose parents are Mexican but is born here. I learned this word in middle school, and ‘Chicana’ is a big culture in LA. ”

“Cactuses are super important in Mexico, they are on their flag and we eat them. And they also have a big influence on Aztec culture. On the flag, there are a cactus, an eagle and a snake. So on the flag, the eagle is standing on a cactus and with a snake in its snout. This has to do with the original myth of Aztec people. When they were trying to find a place to live, the god told them that once they find a eagle that was eating a serpent, that will be their holy land, the place that they were supposed to live in. They searched it and found the eagle, and the place they found it is now Mexico City. They built the empire because they saw the image. ”

“So when my mom says to me that “el nopal en la frenta”, it means that I look kind of indigenous. It’s like a criticism, it’s like you have a cactus on your forehand, you look Mexican, you look brown and indigenous, but you can’t even speak Spanish.’”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section of the entire interview. AG told me the context of the proverb when she heard it. When she talks to her mom but can’t speak Spanish perfectly, or when she is not aware of certain Mexican history and culture, AG’s mom will say this proverb to her. Moreover, AG told me that this saying is only used between relatives or people who are really familiar to each other, so this will never appear in a conversation between two people just met.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

This is a saying always told from a older generation to a younger one, and especially, according to my informant, is prevalent in LA and being told to young people around her age. This reflects on the trend that younger generation of immigrants tends to lose the connection with indigenous culture and the older generation is the monitor to enhance the culture bonding.