Author Archives: Kelsey Kelliher

Big Sis Night: 1

Nationality: Russian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/25/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

We’ve been doing this since I was a freshman.  So, my family is very cool. Really cool people.  So when the little bro comes in, the guys say “your big since isn’t here but she’ll be here soon.  Will you go get…” some random object in their closet.  And then all the girls will be hiding in the closet. And we jump out with handles and force them to drink immediately! And then we dress the up in a costume and draw all over them.  And make them drink more.  

No one in my family really wants to go to the party. We just want to hang out with each other. 

 

Ariel: all the boys get a piercing.  All the girls go with them.  We don’t like it, but we go.  It’s a thing.

La Llorona

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Residence: Chicago, Illinois
Performance Date: April 25, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant LK told me the La Llorona legend that he grew up hearing.  He heard this story from his mother when he was around 10 years old.  He grew up in a Mexican American home in Chicago.

“The story is that she drowned her children in a stream while she was washing clothes.  And as her punishment whenever her spirit roams through that little town in Mexico, whenever she comes across water, she cries.  And people can hear her at night crying because she is looking for her children.”

This legend

go into the La Llorona article that we read for class

Bad Spirits in Ice Cold Air

Performance Date: March 5, 2015

Okay so, my great grandma’s home in Chicago was an old historical mansion.  For whatever reason, when the electrical work was put in the light switch in the foyer was not right when you walked in the door.  You had to walk to the end of the hallway to turn the light on.  

And no one was home.  And my dad got home.  He was like 17-ish.  He walked in the door.  And the room he felt was ice cold.  A cold he had never felt in his life.  And my great grandma used to see spirits all the time.  And she would also describe a bad spirit as being ice cold.  And it’s a cold that shouldn’t be there.  So he told my great grandma about it right away.  And she had someone come and do something.  

But her mom, Mama Price, our great great grandmother had like a book. Not a book on witchcraft, but some sort of spell-ish book with like homeopathic remedies.  There is a very spiritual side the that side of the family.  

Ring Around the Rosie

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 2 & 5
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: January 14, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

Ring around the rosie,

A pocket full of posies,  

Ashes, Ashes,

We all fall down  [the kids collapsed to the ground and rolled around]

We all get up and run around [the kids go up and ran around]

 

I thought this was an interesting rendition of Ring Around the Rosie because I had never heard the last stanza of the rhyme that the children performed.  Perhaps this is a common rendition in Los Angeles and I am just not aware of it because I did not grow up here.

Making Tamales–No Boys Allowed

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: President of a dental practice
Residence: Chicago, Illinois
Performance Date: April 26, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

LK explained that his grandmother and great grandmother would make tamales routinely at his great grandmother’s house.  His grandmother, great grandmother, aunts and mom would sit around the table and make tamales while telling stories.

While this tamale-making is a tradition in and of itself, LK shared a superstition present during the cooking.  LK explained that men were not allowed in the kitchen.  If there were men helping out in the kitchen or even simply standing in the kitchen, the women believed the tamales would burn and therefore be ruined.

LK’s family are Mexican Americans who were for the most part born in America.  LK’s grandmother and great grandmother were very superstitious women.  Therefore, it is not out of the ordinary for them to have superstitions regarding time spent in the kitchen.

Perhaps this superstition developed because the men would distract the women if they were in the kitchen and the tamales would actually burn–a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.  Or perhaps this superstition developed because the kitchen was a woman’s territory in Mexican American culture.  Their belief may have been a mechanism to keep the men off the women’s turf.