Author Archives: Isabelle Perez

Anansi and the Sky God

Nationality: African American
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2021
Primary Language: English

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (RS) is an African-American woman whose parents told her this story as a child.

DESCRIPTION: (told through video call)
(RS): “I know that there is an African folktale about this spider called Anansi basically to teach children not to make bad decisions. Does that work?”

(INT): “Yeah, that’s good.”

(RS): “‘Kay, good. So the Anansi is basically this spider, right? Right. There’s a lot of stories about him, because he was this trickster guy, like, like, like… Loki from Marvel, I guess? Yeah. So there used to be this sky god dude and one day Anansi was like, “Hey buddy, I want all the stories people to tell about you to be about me, yeah? What do I gotta do?”

And the sky god was like, “I don’t know, my guy. Prove you’re worthy and stuff,” and then he was like, “Do these THREE tasks and you can get my stories, but these are also mad difficult, ‘kay?'”

(INT): “What were the tasks?”

(RS): “Relax, woman, I’m getting there. So the tasks were like… ‘get me a whole swarm of bees,’ and ‘bring me a python,’ and ‘get me a leopard,’ just casual stuff that you’d buy at the grocery, yeah? Yeah.” (She laughs.)

“So Anansi managed to get the bees with like, a gourd and some honey, I don’t really know, and then like he tricked the snake into coming with him, and then he bamboozled that silly little leopard because Anansi is a bitch.”

(INT): (laughing) “Okay.”

(RS): “So after KIDNAPPING these poor creatures, he goes up to the sky god and is like, “Bitch, give me my stories.” And the sky god’s like, “Ugh, fine. Here you go.” And that’s what happened! All the sky god’s stories about his greatness and stuff went to that bitch-ass spider. Annoying little guy. He’s smart though. I guess.”

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
RS’s interpretation of this tale was a lot of fun to listen to! I’m still unclear about whether or not there’s some kind of moral to this story. I’m not very familiar with a lot of African folklore, but the story of Anansi definitely reminds me of other stories about tricksters that I know of, such as the Norse god Loki (as RS mentioned) or even fox figures in short stories and tales.

Día de Los Muertos

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 55
Occupation: Construction Field Manager
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: March 2021
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (MP) grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico before immigrating to the US in his early twenties.

DESCRIPTION: (told in person)
(MP): “In Mexico, Día de Los Muertos is a famous holiday that celebrates your dead relatives. It’s on November 1st and 2nd, which technically makes it Los Días de Los Muertos but you and most people living here [in the United States] call it by the singular version.

Catholics families set up the ofrenda, the….the altar with pictures of their dead relatives they want to remember. It’s supposed to be in the house, kinda private, and they put stuff like comida y bebidas y floras (food, drinks, and flowers)… on it as like, an offering to them. Lots of panaderias (bakeries) and other merchants also sell those sugar skulls… los calaveras y pan de muerto (bread of the dead). For the ofrenda. It’s so that the souls of their loved ones can come visit them during these days, y’know?

They’ll also go to the graveyard and clean up their family’s graves and put offerings on that too. It’s a lot of prayer and celebration, since it’s supposed to be happy and all. I know big festivals and parades happen all over Mexico to celebrate too. In Oaxaca, we went to the one that happens at the Zocalo (Oaxaca City’s main square) and saw all the people dressed in costumes with the masks and the dancing and singing. It’s very family-oriented and a lot of fun.

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Having celebrated Día de Los Muertos before, I was already quite familiar with some of the traditions the interlocutor mentioned. Despite this, it was still eye-opening to hear about the holiday from someone who actually grew up in the culture from which the holiday.

Traditions commemorating the death of loved ones are prevalent in most, if not all cultures; however, I think that Mexico’s celebration of Los Días de Los Muertos is unique because it celebrates death as a positive thing rather than something that means grief, loss, and pain. I think it’s amazing to hear about the humor, joy, and happiness that surrounds death in this tradition.

The Cursed Daughter

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has many relatives living in Mexico and is a first-generation Mexican American themself. The area their family is from is very superstitious about witches, curses, and magic. The following describes one of the stories about curses being put on a member of that community.

DESCRIPTION: (told over a phone call)
(JG): “Okay-but, so- basically, um…my grandma has a house in Mexico. She lives here now, um, ‘cuz she came over here but like, she still has her house in Mexico. And that’s where we stay whenever we go visit. Um, and she told us this story about how when she was younger, her next-door neighbor, this older woman, had a daughter. And the daughter got cursed by someone. They don’t know what happened. They probably think it had something to do with a…cheating situation, ‘cuz that was a lot of the things back then, or…even now. Yeah. And so she got cursed.

So apparently she got really, really skinny, like she completely lost her appetite. Um… she started throwing up lizards, and they said that like, nails started coming out of her head. I’m not sure if it’s like, fingernails or if it was like, steel nails. But yeah, my grandma wouldn’t really ever see her, since she was always inside the house and stuff, but she started getting really, really bad. And so they started a healing process, like, they brought a healer. And one of that included like, putting a lizard in a jar and like letting it shrivel up and die, and that killed off that part of it. Um… and then they tried to do like, an exorcism-type-of-thing. But, something went wrong and like, the house started catching fire. But it was only that house.

And so like, that house is still burnt—like, we can see it when we go. The daughter, I think, turned out fine, like everything turned out okay, but that was one thing that happened.”

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
I’m curious about the effects of the curse, from the lack of appetite to the more surreal aspects, such as the lizards and the nails. I’m conflicted about the legitimacy of this story, since JG did bring up how everyone in their grandmother’s community knew about it but never really saw the girl, so all of the information they had was mostly word-of-mouth. I’m also unsure about whether this was a result of homeopathic or contagious magic, and while JG doesn’t know too many details of the curse itself, they do know that many kinds of these curses have some connection to the person’s corporeal self, so I’m leaning more towards understanding this curse as a form of contagious magic.

Witchcraft and Curses in Mexico

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has many relatives living in Mexico and is a first-generation Mexican American themself. The area their family is from is very superstitious about witches, curses, and magic. The following describes one of the stories about the community’s cemeteries acting as a hotspot for placing curses

DESCRIPTION: (told over the phone)
(JG): “There’s also a really….because witchcraft is just like—fairly common in Mexico, especially in the cemeteries. So like, when we went to the cemetery, ‘cuz we went to go visit my uncles and we also went for like, a spooky little tour that they do.

There’s this grave that’s like, split open, like it’s broken open, and they regularly have to send people to like, check, because they put like, little witchcraft charms in there to curse people…because of, like, the energy of the cemetery. So they do that.

And then also, when we went to go visit my uncle, my brother saw something sticking out of the ground. And he was like, “What is that?” (He was like, younger.)

So he went to like, dig it out and it was a picture of a guy and it had like a coin and some pottery stuff… and it was meant to cure him. And that man had been, like, cursed. So we had to take it to a priest and he had to like, bless it and undo the curse. So that was that.”

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Different stories about magic and curses are prevalent across cultures, and I definitely find it interesting to hear about the different ways people acknowledge and try to free themselves of these malevolent forms of magic. Oftentimes, we hear about curses being lifted by some kind of shaman or healer, one that the community designates as someone who can control or get rid of a curse. JG and their family taking the cursed objects to a priest is an example of this.

I also find that the graveyards being a hotspot for these curses to get placed makes a lot of sense. Since death is a major element of these curses and is considered one of the worst effects a curse can allegedly have on a person, it’s no wonder that curses and cursed objects can be found throughout a cemetery.

Curses and Ghosts

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has moved into different houses and buildings with their family, taking note of strange occurrences happening in each location. Documented below are some of their experiences with the paranormal.

DESCRIPTION: (told over the phone)
(JG): “The houses and apartments that I’ve like, lived in have been very active with ghosts. If you can’t tell, we have a lot going on in the family.” (They laugh).

“So the house I lived in before this one [their current home], I lived in an apartment before that one, before that one. So like, three household…residences ago. That one was like, really, really active. There’d be a lot of stuff going on, like doors would open and close by themself. At that point, my brother was a baby and that was when my uncles had just passed away. And so there was a lot going on with that. Like, he would sit in the middle of the living room and babble to himself. And-he-my dad and my uncle, like as [my brother] was talking to seemingly no one, would feel, like, rushes of cold air. My mom had sent up like, a little altar for my first uncle that passed away and we put like a little beer thingy there. And somehow all of the beer that was in that cup disappeared in a few minutes, but the only person who was there was [my brother], but [my brother] was a toddler, like he couldn’t even walk at this point, or reach the thingy. We never told him my uncles’ names either, but when he grew up and got old enough to talk, he knew their names and that’s because we think that whoever he was babbling to as a baby was my uncles.

There was also, whenever it would rain, if you went all the way to the back, you could hear heels. Like heels heels. Every single person who went over to our house heard them at least once and they would come up to the back door. There was that. Yeah. Stuff here and there, doors opening and closing, napkins floating around, aprons moving, wind always passing around, lights and the TV turning on by themselves. There’s been a lot of things in every single house we lived in but those are some examples. From every place we’ve lived in.”

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Personally, I have never had an experience quite like JG’s with the supernatural. I found it interesting how JG notes that their baby brother (at the time) was the only one who had the ability to “communicate” with who their family believed to be the recently passed uncles. It’s even eerier how JG said how their family never told their brother about the uncles’ names, but he grew up and was able to recall them. I don’t understand how exactly, but it is definitely worth mentioning! JG stated that they’ve moved houses a lot, so I’m curious about whether or not other residents of the homes or apartments felt the same ghostly presence.