Monthly Archives: May 2011

Never Have I Ever Game

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Toledo, Ohio
Performance Date: 4/10/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 19 year old Filipino female. She lives with her mother in Toledo, Ohio and has one older sister. She was raised Roman Catholic. She is currently a student at a university in Southern California. The informant is the co-president of the club volleyball team at her university.

“Never Have I Ever” is a game the informant learned freshman year in high school. In her experience it is most commonly associated with alcohol, although it is not necessary. Its main purpose is to a “get to know you” game. Although she first learned it in the context of parties, now she most often plays it with her volleyball team, mostly at the beginning of the season to get to know new team members. It lets people get to know each other by making public what the players have and haven’t done. Most commonly, the game revolves around sexual exploits, dating, drinking, etc. When alcohol is incorporated, players can either drink if they have or haven’t done something. The informant has played it with both rules. Similarly, at different times she has played it the winner has been designated by the person who keeps up the most fingers or who puts them all down first.

Rules: Each player puts up all of their ten fingers. Going around in a circle, each player names an action that they have never done, phrasing it “never have I ever …….” If anyone playing has committed the action they have to place one finger down. The players continue around until all of the player except one have had to put down all of their fingers.

Analysis: “Never Have I Ever” is an interesting example of the negotiation of culturally excepted female behavior. In modern society, female promiscuity and such behavior is highly stigmatized. Bragging, or even blatant sharing, of social or sexual exploits is still somewhat frowned upon. This game provides an outlet for females to share their experiences without having to explicitly state them; they only have to reveal if another player brings it up. It is also a way in which female players can gauge how experienced there in comparison to others. But at the same time the game itself does not completely de-stigmatize such actions. There is ambiguity to whether it is more acceptable to be the one with the most fingers up or the most down. There is no clear designation as to which state is dubbed the winner or loser.

Annotation: Shepard, Sara. Never Have I Ever. New York: HarperTeen, 2011.

Chicken Adobo Recipe

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Toledo, Ohio
Performance Date: 4/10/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 19 year old Filipino female. She lives with her mother in Toledo, Ohio and has one older sister. She was raised Roman Catholic. She is currently a student at a university in Southern California. The informant is the co-president of the club volleyball team at her university.

Chicken adobo is a traditional Filipino dish, although there is a lot of variation in the exact ingredients depending on the region of the Philippines. The informant’s mother made chicken adobo for her and her sister all throughout their childhood. The informant saw her mother making the dish as a child, but never learned to make it until she went college. The informant specifically asked her mother for the recipe because she missed having the dish. At home her mother makes the dish about twice a month. The informant herself makes it at least once a week. The informant uses prepared adobo seasoning for her chicken because it saves time and doesn’t contain chiles, which she does not like. Her mother makes her own seasoning, including cloves, chiles, garlic, salt, pepper, etc. The informant’s mother fries the chicken pieces until crispy. The informant herself prefers to bake the chicken.

Recipe: Take chicken pieces, thighs, drumsticks, breasts, etc. Marinate in soy sauce, lemon juice and adobo seasonings. Place chicken pieces on a piece of foil on a baking sheet. Bake until done. Serve with rice.

Analysis: This account illustrates how important foodways are in constructing ideas about home and identity. The informant never learned or tried to learn how to cook chicken adobo until she was separated from her home and family. After being away from home, she purposefully learned how to cook this dish from her mother. Now, living away from home and the seat of her childhood identity, she cooks the dish much more often even than her mother did at home. It is likely her desire to learn how to cook chicken adobo, and the frequency with which she prepares it, represents a need to reestablish ties with her home, family, and cultural background. That she associates this dish with her home is reinforced by the fact that she specifically requests her mother cook this dish every time she spends time at home. For the informant, it is this foodway that reconnects her with her childhood and family.

Ghost story – Hong Kong

Nationality: Chinese
Residence: Hong Kong
Performance Date: 11 April 2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

This is a story about a haunted school in Hong Kong that Theresa heard from her father when she was growing up. She told me two versions, one that supposedly took place 20-25 years ago and one that takes place when the school was newly built (date unknown). In both cases, the main thrust of the story is the same.

“The school was built when the Hong Kong government were expanding the rural areas to accommodate a large group of low income, low education people to settle away from the city center. The kids were absolute terrors, and the teachers doesn’t care. Generally, most schools in Hong Kong are six or seven stories- concrete buildings, with stairs and hallways running on the outside like balconies. Windows looking into the class rooms run the entire length of the hallway. There were small recesses a couple of square feet in size, that leads into the rooms, offering more protection from the elements. Most schools don’t have a gymnasium, usually they have a courtyard with basketball hoops that also doubles as an assembly area.

“ In one version, twenty, twenty five years ago, the boy was in grade six and by all accounts a little monster. It was after school and he was running down the hall on the third floor when he crashed into the walls outside the staff room. None of the teachers inside noticed when the kid bounced off a wall and fell onto the floor. The kid had a concussion and died on school property, right outside the staff room door. The school swept it under the rug and the parents, being uneducated, poor and most likely influenced by the school, said nothing.

“The second version cast the school in slightly better light. The accident occurred when the school was newly built. The town was still new enough that there were no little to no road signs and most addresses were still using the land’s lot number. The boy was in the courtyard when he fell after climbing something, hitting his head on the ground and lost consciousness. The school called for an ambulance but it being a relatively new school, and a lack of a real address other than a lot number, the ambulance took too long getting there and the boy died before help could arrive.

“The incident should have ended there and given enough time people would have forgotten it, except not long after, the janitors noticed some nights there was a student still around the school when they were closing. They complained to the principle that they seen him around the second floor bathroom and the third floor after school, then runs away when they tried to get him to leave, and would the teachers please do something about it. Not much was done and they were told not to talk about it. The janitors got increasingly frustrated since they can’t close the school with a student still inside.

“They finally caught him one night on the third floor. There was a janitor on each end of the hall stairways to prevent him from escaping. The student started running towards the other end of the hall, then turned into the staff room’s door recess. The janitors thought they had him, only he wasn’t there when they arrived and the staff room door was locked and padlocked on the outside. None of the janitors mentioned the student again, except now it’s the school’s worse kept secret, kinda hard not to know when every once in awhile, someone would see a student run down the third floor hallway and into the staff room after school.”

I think this story is fantastically interesting because it stands in contrast to some of the more prominent ghost stories in Hong Kong. A brief internet search revealed many stories related to grisly murders and horrific accidents, while this story stand apart as more of a cautionary tale. There is no way of knowing whether or not this is true but, to me, this story about a school designed specially for low income students to be accommodated away from the city center and where a general atmosphere of apathy persists, even when a student dies, feels like a subtle critique of bureaucracy and class divisions, and I would not be surprised to find similar stories in other cities, both in China and abroad, where there is a significant income gap.

Parable

Nationality: American
Residence: IL
Performance Date: 11 April 2011
Primary Language: English

“There’s a story about a man who goes into synagogue in a small Ashkenazic town [in Germany, along the Rhine] in the 18th or 19th century.  He’s there for Yom Kippur, which is the most important holy day of the Jewish year. (Well, that’s an oversimplification, but go with it.)  Yom Kippur is a day where we pray to repent of all our sins and have a fresh slate for the New Year, to become better people.  We pray, significantly, for G-d to grant forgiveness, so that we may move on.  This man walks into the synagogue, and he starts saying his alef bet (ABC’s in Hebrew–this would have been before the Reform movement, when you couldn’t go to a synagogue that prayed in the vernacular, it was all in Hebrew or Aramaic).  Some people around him start to complain, to ask what he is doing.  The rabbi comes and asks him what he is doing.  He says, “The only thing I know in Hebrew is the alef bet.  I thought I would offer that to G-d as my sincere prayer of repentance.”  The rabbi told the congregants, “G-d is more likely to hear every letter that sincerely comes out of his mouth than all of the prayers said by people without true intent.”

Leslee grew up in a Jewish community in Kansas, and when talking about her the folklore of her  culture, she said “Most Jewish folklore has been published, largely because, when you’ve never been a majority culture, and the majority cultures have consistently tried to eradicate you, and you base your culture on a notion of being “people of the book”, you write stuff down…ask any Ashkenazi Jew how far they can trace back their family: the people who can do it more than two generations are the super lucky (and rare) ones.”

Accordingly, this story emphasizes the importance, not necessarily of words themselves, but of the intent behind them, and (as Leslee says) the way language is used to preserve culture. The man in the story does not have the words he needs, so he uses the words that he has and that rings truer for the rabbi than any thoughtless recitations from people who had been schooled in the language and customs. It’s a pretty great reminder to people of all religions that their rituals have meaning and purpose that is largely drawn from the faith that drives them.

I found another version of this story which supposedly occurred in a Jewish community in Kiev during perestroika. The setting is Yom Kippur, 1987, and the story explains that it was the first Yom Kippur in decades where Jews have been allowed to practice openly, and that the service was not going well. People were uncertain of how to pray together and were growing bored. Finally, the rabbi tells a version of the parable above (set in Poland) where the protagonist is not an adult man, but is instead a shepherd boy who does not know the prayers and cannot read, but very much wants to pray, so he recites the alef bet to the best of his ability and asks G-d to understand. Moved by this story, the people recited the alef bet as a whole and then exited the synagogue. I find this version very poignant because it demonstrates the effect that folklore can have on a community, helping them to retain their identity in the face of opposition and strife, and serving as a reminder that the universal tie that connects all of them is not necessarily ritual, but faith; and this piece of folklore is indicative of the strength of that faith- a faith which has allowed “a minority culture” to survive and thrive throughout the centuries and on into the future.

The version of the legend that I cited can be found here: http://www.ascentofsafed.com/cgi-bin/ascent.cgi?Name=567-02

Jokes

Nationality: English
Age: 52
Occupation: Journalist
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a caucasian female in her 50s. She was born and raised in England. She, and her three siblings, were raised as orthodox jews. After university, the informant moved to Northern California for graduate school. She later moved to Los Angeles, where she now resides. The informant trained in school as a biologist, but switched to journalism and now works for a large newspaper. She is divorced with one child.

Following are two jokes the informant learned from her father.

Joke #1:

The informant learned this joke from her father. He started telling it to her and her siblings when they were very young and has continued to tell it to them even while they are in adulthood. She retold it to her siblings during childhood. The informant considers this to be on of the worse, most pathetic, cringe worthy jokes that she knows. Its telling, however, reminds her of her father in a very affectionate way, and so even while she hates the joke, she will tell it to others and enjoy being told it by her father.

Text:

What did the earwig say as he fell off the cliff?   Earwego!

Joke #2:

The informant was told this joke by her father. He told it his children when they were teenagers. Part of the joke was the story that went behind it. Her father first learned it from friends at school. He did not understand the implications of the joke and so he told it to his parents, who were extremely shocked. In the informant’s opinion, it is this back story that makes the joke worth retelling.

Text:

A woman is in the hospital, lying in bed, with her new baby in her arms. And a man is standing by her bed looking at the baby. A little old lady passes the bed. Looks at the baby and says, “oh what a beautiful baby, doesn’t it look just like the father.” And the man turns to her and says “Chuck it Mrs., I’m the lodger”.

Analysis: The first joke makes an interesting case. The informant herself states that she thinks it is a terrible joke, with little to no comedic value. And yet she enjoys having her father constantly retell it to her and will tell it herself to others. The informant’s propensity to transmit a “bad” joke has to do with the emotional significance she attributes to the joke. This emotional tie is probably heightened by the geographical distance between the informant and her father (Los Angeles to England). This example illustrates that it is not always the lore itself, its comedic value, etc., that determines whether it will survive and be passed along through society. There are other factors, besides quality, such as emotional resonance and context, that can be more important in determining the propagation of a piece of folklore. The second joke is another example of this. While this joke does contain more strict comedic punch, it is not this that drives the informant to retell or remember it. It is the associated story about her father that keeps this joke towards the forefront of her consciousness. In this case, the story behind the joke, a funny tale in and of itself, supercedes the actual material of the primary joke. The joke becomes a vessel for the telling of the amusing story about her father. In both of these cases, the piece of folklore cannot be extricated from its context, as it is the context that defines the jokes in the mind of the informant and propels their remembrance and continued use.