Author Archives: Anna Cuesta

San Jose Sharks: the shark chomp

Age: 20s Hometown: Lafayette, CA

Text: When the other team draws a penalty, the entirety of the NHL San Jose Sharks hockey fans in the rink do a shark chomping motion with their hands.

Context: Participant and I were watching hockey and they starting do a hand motion in celebration . She is a lifelong sharks hockey fan, with her parents being season ticket holders. She does this hand motion out in the wild too when she runs into other fans and want’s to show solidarity.

Analysis: This is an example of folk gesture and kinetic folklore within a sports subculture. The shark chomp is a ritualized performance that unifies thousands of strangers into a single sharks fan folk group through synchronized movement. The participant mentioned that it also serves to bring up the energy for the upcoming powerplay and intimidate the other fans/teams with the sheer amount of people participating. It also serves as an in-group signal for other sharks fans outside of the usual performance space- the ‘shark tank’ hockey rink.

Nigerian first paycheck

Age: 20s Location: Chicago, IL, Background: Nigerian-American

Context: Participants (initals DA) is from a Nigerian-American household. She grew up in Dubai and now lives in a Chicago suburb. She has many siblings and is very close to her family.

Text: DA states that in Nigerian culture, the first paycheck a teen/young adult makes must go back to their parents or an adult figure. She says it’s a way of “showing appreciation and gratitude to those who raised you”. Participant mentions that everyone in her family does this. However, for her personal first paycheck she went and spent it at McDonald’s. DA says that her mother especially was not happy about it.

Analysis:

Here, a teens first paycheck serves as an offering, marking perhaps a transition from the adolescence to adulthood. A first paycheck is a time where one steps into the world of independence and financial freedom from their parents. By surrendering this first check, it’s a symbolic gesture of gratitude and the sacrifices that the family has made to get the individual to this point in their life. When the participant breaks this tradition, she, without realizing the depth of meaning behind this gesture, breaks a social contract. This moment can be a “paying back” of the life-debt to the parents so that the child can begin their own life with a clean start. This is obvious in the participant’s mothers angry reaction, which likely wasn’t over the loss of a couple dollars, but of, in her eyes, her child’s failure to acknowledge the transition point.

Christmas struffoli (honey balls)

Age: 50s Hometown: Bronx, NY

Performance Context: I experienced this recipe and performance firsthand every December/ around Christmas time as the informant is my father. He comes from a large Puerto Rican and Italian-American family from the Bronx. His Italian family’s side are from Sicily and Naples.

Recipe/Description:

According to my father (the informant) – dough is hand mixed with orange zest and it cools a large gathering, usually the kids/cousins, roll the dough into strips called the ‘snakes’ of a certain thickness of a finger. The snakes are then chopped into squares which are then rolled by hand. They are then deep fried and left to cool in a pot of honey with a splash of sambuca as the secret ingredient. This is usually done in huge batches meant to be tinned and given to neighbors, friends, extended family, and people like doctors, teachers, dentists, etc.

The rolling technique along with the size of the balls are highly specified as the smaller the piece the crispy they end of getting fried. The informant states that nowadays their family (myself included) “does not create the proper sized dough pieces” and that back in the day the informants grandmother would make them “re-do entire batches of them if they weren’t up to standard” .

My father mentions there were a staple among his childhood and grew up sitting at a table rolling dough all day in the weeks leading up to Christmas. He remembers the act so vividly because his hands would start cramping and he would be so bored when the younger cousins would give up and leave the ‘rolling’ table.

Analysis:

This is a classic example of family/holiday foodways. The making of the Struffoli becomes a whole day and entire family affair. Once the day is decided to be dedicated to making honey balls, nobody can escape the kitchen. I think the fact that it’s such a labor intensive process, repetitive and boring, keeps the memory of this tradition so vivid. “It’s a very unique tradition”, even among other Italian-American traditions, according to my Father.

The specific snake rolling technique is a perfect piece of kinetic folklore, it’s a physical skill passed down through imitation, using the “thickness of a finger” as a marker. My father’s grandmother, and then his own, role in ensuring the quality shows how this specific tradition is policed and ensured to be passed down consistently generation to generation. The act of gifting the honey balls also serves as social currency, showing appreciation and love as well as signaling those in the community of their Italian heritage.

Rubbing an egg as a cure for illness/injury

Age: 20s Location: Los Angeles

Context: Participant and I in were anthropology class discussing various means of folk medicine from our childhoods. She is Mexican-American with both her parents having been born Mexico.

Text: Rubbing an egg on an area of the body to ‘cure’ it. Regardless if its a physical injury or an illness like the flu. The participant mentioned that her mother and her mothers family were more likely to do this, however her father never seemed to question the act and accepted it easily, likely encountering in his life as well. She mentioned it is a common thing to do in Mexican-American households.

Analysis:

The practice illustrates the normalization of ritual healing within Mexican-American households and a good example of folk medicine practices. By passing the egg over the body, the family performs a “cleansing” that validates communal beliefs and provides psychological comfort regardless of the specific medical diagnosis. There is value in the act of care and attention provided with this likely soothing act of rubbing the egg.

The Legend of the Purple People

Location: Lafayette, CA

Context: The informant ( initials ET) and I talking about hometown legends and the concept of growing up in small, suburban towns. That’s when she brought up a well-known ‘cult’ or group called the Purple People in Lafayette.

Text:

ET: There’s a cult in my town. Well, I don’t know if their cult or if they’re still around, but they’re called the Purple People.

Me: How do you know about them

ET: Well, I think it’s mostly my parent’s generations that talk about them— my parents not as much because they’re not from Lafayette— but my friends parents definitely.

Me: Have people ever seen them or like what do you know about them?

ET: Well there’s supposed to be a purple house they live in but I’m not sure where it is or if it still exists, but I know there’s a specific field in town people go to try to see them.

Me: Okay so was this a dare type of thing or what?

ET: Yeah exactly, people would be dared to go run up to the ‘Purple People’ house and try to maybe interact with them.

Me: Why was running to see them a dare, or what made it kind of higher stakes?

ET: Ok so I think they were said to be sex cult and participated in group sex frequently, or at least that’s what my friends parents would say! But I’m not sure if that’s made up or not.

Me: Oh wow, so there was definitely a stigma then? Or what was the rhetoric around them?

ET: Yeah they kind of kept to themselves and people just thought they were weird I think. But like the other thing is that as a kid, I feel like half the people believed in them and the other half didn’t. It was like a big debate.

Analysis:

This narrative is a classic example of a suburban legend, where a small truth regarding a likely communal living group was transformed by local gossip into a neighborhood myth and word of mouth legend. The ‘taboo’ subject of sex and communal living likely fostered the spread of gossip and was ignited by anxieties of the people at the time. However, later on for the subject’s generation, the Purple People functioned as a rite of passage where kids could get dared to go ‘find the house’ or have an encounter with the Purple People.