Author Archives: Carmen Villasenor Santiago

Pupusas and rellenitos de platano

Nationality: Salvadorian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Okay let’s say pupusa and rellenitos de platano pupusas are made from corn flour beans, cheese, meat – which can include chicken or pork – and well these are very common ingredients that can be found almost anywhere in Latin America…I learned about them from my mommy who knows how to make them, and trust me they are so good I can eat them for DAYS. It’s a native dish so it has been passed down by like tradition I guess you can say, even before the Spanish came it was like just a simple meal but it is special to us because it’s something that has been passed down to us by our ancestors, wow I sound so fancy. Sorry any who, one ingredient you can use in a pupusa is the Loroco, the Loroco is an indigenous plant of El Salvador, it’s not really found outside of Central America. Rellenos de platano are mashed up platanos filled with either refried beans or like crema, well cream whatever, so you mash up the platanos, stuff them with either the beans or cream., fry them then roll them in sugar, my mom also showed me how to make these. I kinda feel like making food with my mom was a really well good way to make sure I was more involved in my culture and such, plus I love cooking so it was great and it made me learn about my past family members too. But man those meals are good!”

Another means of folklore that is very good is the way that cultures unite through food, it is a means to come together as a family. Food is a good way to learn about one’s culture because not only you learn about the plants that one can find from the place we are from but get to interact with families who teach us the recipes.  Maybe even so these recipes will be taught to our children by us in hopes that they will keep the traditions and continue this sort of folklore for generations to come in order to make sure that it gets passed on.

Idioms to scold

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/30/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

“I can’t think of any monsters… but there are these Chinese idioms that my parents would always say whenever they commented on my, well bad behavior, it’s usually a 4 word phrase that doesn’t really mean anything word for word, uh it is kinda like English idioms, like for example: spread oneself too thin, or things like that, but has a long history behind it that has some random and specific moral that relates to whatever they’re referring to. They’re actually pretty cool to know, there are thousands or some ridiculous number of them, so referencing them can actually be considered like being very knowledgeable/scholarly I believe. I just remember my parents scolding me with these random Chinese phrases that meant nothing to me but they’d keep repeating it and eventually I’d understand the meaning behind them too … and I just guess this is significant because well like I grew up with it so it made me want to like learn them because were parents were ALWAYS fucking saying them, it’s just another aspect that influenced my culture and folklore and such growing up, you know? And now I know a few so I’m proud of myself.”

Words of scorn are often very common when talking about folklore because they are used to shape the children’s actions and make them do more things that the parent found acceptable or such. It is the kind of folklore that allows the shaping of children through scolding or other means. It is also interesting that these words have probably been passed down from many many generations and form a very important part of the lives of many cultures because they grew up with it so they want to make sure that their children have this knowledge as well.

Chinese New Year and Moon Festival

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/30/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

“As for celebrations… we always celebrated Chinese New Year and Moon Festival by eating special food or having parties with family friends or relatives. I always looked forward to these holidays! For Chinese New Year we’d get our red envelopes full of money from each of our older relatives as long as we recited the phrase “xin nian kuaI le” or happy New Year to each of them (laughs), and I mean common its fucking money for saying a small phrase. And we’d either have a nice meal out or like we’d all make dumplings together. Hm, then Moon Festival was marked by moon cakes – we’d try out all these different types but my favorite was always red bean, you should have one if you haven’t had it before!! I guess these were pretty significant in my life because it brought our Chinese community together more and like gave me at least some reason to be proud of my ethnicity as a kid when I really didn’t understand what was going on or anything like that, that’s why it is like so significant to me.”

I think that big family celebrations where the whole family is involved allow family members to come together and explore different aspects they were not aware of before and little celebrations in which they get like money or such makes the smaller children want to participate and learn more about their culture as they grow up. It’s folklore used to bring families together.

Saint Nicholas Day

Nationality: German
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/28/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish; Greek

“Saint Nicholas Day which is before Christmas, I believe is the 13th of December, actually I can check that for you” (goes off to check), “December 6th sorry. And you lay your shoes outside and Saint Nicholas stuffs them with treats overnight.” “it was always a fun holiday to celebrate and it made me feel a lot more connected to my ancestral roots because it was something that my family did differently from other families, and it served as a reminder of my heritage…let me see, it also gave me a sense of pride in whom I was and who my family was, it made me feel like I was part of something more than just my family and just, just white as a race.”
“So like Christmas?” I asked
“Kind of its sort of like a prelude to Christmas, it was a delightful holiday it made my childhood fun, so the story of saint Nicholas is that there were three girls who needed money for various reasons and they came from a poor family, saint Nicholas heard of their plight and while they were drying their stockings one evening, he snuck over and filled their stockings with the money that they needed. And that is why we have Saint Nicholas Day to commemorate that act of kindness.”

I believe that this is a way that people kind of have a variation of Christmas in order to be able to adapt it to their own heritage and it would it some ways make them more united.  The way that different cultures manage to make variations of holidays in order to match them to their culture is interesting to hear about because it keeps their uniqueness there.  They are able to integrate their traditions and incorporate them into this type of folklore and that is a certain characteristic that many people manage to incorporate into their lives.

Baseball white lines and peeing on bats

Nationality: Caucasion
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

“Okay I got one: baseball, so basically it was self-inflicted but so when I was one I threw toy cars at my mom’s ankles like she was a catcher, then if she put on sesame street, I would go up to the TV and click the button until it went to baseball, and so like keep in mind this is before I could talk. Then as a child I would mainly read baseball stories or books, and then with my one friend we would always test each other on baseball trivia, well basically through all of this conditioning baseball became part of my culture. For example, I like hot dogs, seeds, hats, smell of freshly cut grass etc., because it all relates to baseball. My role models were baseball players like uhm David Eckstein. Also, my family really got around baseball cause of all the time that I forced them to spend spent at lessons or practices, teams, clubs, and all-starts etc. well you get the idea. To make it more obvious think of baseball as like my folklore or myths or history or whatever. So now we have many superstitions within this game like not stepping on the white lines and well (laughs hard) we pee on the bats.
The reason why we don’t step on the white lines is because it can be seen as an omen for bad luck, and well I think it derives from like the fact that if you step on them they might like erase and so it makes the foul line harder to see which is like bad. And the other one sounds so fucking weird so I don’t like to say it often, but anyways we pee on our bats when there is like a cold streak because it is supposed to get rid of the bad luck plus it’s a hell of a lot of fun to do!”

It is very interesting how to many people different things can seem as folklore or their culture to them such as baseball, and its important to acknowledge how important traditions are to people.  Therefore the definition of folklore becomes a little bit ambiguous because it is something we cannot control but there are different things that constitute to different people’s folklore beliefs and therefore they may vary.