Author Archives: Ebi Penawou

Doljanchi

Text:


“So when I was one, I had this huge birthday party, and they laid out certain things — like a stethoscope, or money, or rice that symbolizes success. And then the baby has to pick one of them, and that’ll determine their path in life. A stethoscope would mean a doctor or something like that. I think I chose the rice. That’s from my Korean side.”

Context:


Doljanchi (also Dol) is the traditional Korean first-birthday celebration, and, officially, the Doljabi ceremony plays a vital role as an object-choosing ritual. Objects placed before the child vary by family and period but generally include objects that symbolize prosperity, health, scholarship, longevity, and professional achievements. The informant, who is half-Korean, inherited this practice from her father’s side and recalled it with pride, linking it to what she saw as a broader Korean cultural ethos of persistence and upward mobility.

Analysis:


Doljabi is one of the most recognizable folk rites in Korean culture, a fortune-telling performance at one of the earliest celebrations of a child’s life. Its endurance, even among second-generation Korean Americans, speaks to its profound cultural resonance. But most importantly, it’s not truly believed that the child’s choice is literally determining their future. The ceremony is more of an aspirational blend of parental hope and communal adornment. The informant’s observation is especially rich in that she ties the Doljabi to an understanding of Korean national identity, where the practice is not simply a matter of family heritage but an expression of a people’s relationship to ambition, hard labor, and prophetic evolving throughout life itself. And this shift from family tradition to ethnic pride is exactly how folk traditions maintain meaning in diasporic contexts: they become bearers of a larger tale about who a people are and where they have come from.

Igbo Kwenu

Text:

“I’ve noticed it’s really popular in moments of gatherings, especially in moments of sorrow, or in a time where encouragement and bravery are really needed, or just when there’s a lot of difficult energy around — it’s just a way to rally and show support. It usually starts with a male of some sort, and he’ll say it, and then people will join in little by little, and by the time he repeats it for the last time, the whole crowd has said it: Igbo Kwenu.”

Context:


Igbo Kwenu is used as a rallying call at a variety of communal occasions — funerals, graduations and celebrations, the informant said. She first learned it from her Nigerian family, but has seen it used by older people in the community and children of immigrants in the United States. She recited this to her at her school graduation, to encourage her and lift her spirits. “Igbo Kwenu” goes beyond a literal translation, as she stressed that this would not fully capture its meaning, and it serves as an invocation of the collective Igbo identity and resilience.

Analysis:


Igbo Kwenu is a call-and-response oral tradition that ritually builds community in real time. The stacking structure — one voice, then another, until the whole crowd is joining in — is a manifestation of the social solidarity the phrase is meant to celebrate. It is not only expressive but performative in the folkloristic sense – to say it together is to act together. The phrase’s most versatile quality is that it can move across emotional registers; it can be used in grief and in joy, in crisis and in triumph. Its primary function is not to name a particular feeling but to invoke the community itself as a source of strength and support. This versatility is especially important to the diasporic life events in Igbo communities. Igbo Kwenu becomes a folk performance on the move, one that proclaims cultural identity and group belonging in any context.

Yam for Pregnancy

Text:

“Something that a lot of Yoruba and Igbo and just Nigerian people in general will do during their pregnancies is eat a lot of yams. There are many positive associations with yams — they’re seen as a nutritious food, a staple starch in Nigeria, found in many dishes. My mom said that when she was pregnant with me, she ate a lot of yams. And her mom did as well — my grandma gave birth to twins, and my grandma’s mom did too, and my grandma was a twin. I think it’s a good luck thing. It won’t always mean you’ll have twins, but it’s just a superstition.”

Context:

As the informant notes, this practice is common in Nigerian customs related to pregnancy and health. The belief, common among the Yoruba and Igbo people to whom her family belongs, has been passed down through at least four generations of women in her direct family line. She reflects that she has already thought of following the same practice eventually. Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of yams, supplying more than half of the world’s yams, meaning that cultural importance in Nigeria amplifies a value that goes far beyond nutritional benefit.

Analysis:

This belief is a colorful example of sympathetic folk medicine: yams are a food associated with abundance, fertility, and foundational nourishment in Nigerian culture, and it is believed that those same qualities will be imparted to a pregnant body. The association between yam consumption and twin births is particularly interesting — twins are sacred in Yoruba culture, associated with good fortune and spiritual power, and this may be why the belief has such strong associative logic. The documented history of twins in this informant’s family over generations empirically supports the folk belief, at least in the family’s narrative. The community’s encouragement to eat is also an endearing form of support for women during a biologically vulnerable period. Whatever the yams do or don’t do, the practice is an act of cultural continuity: each generation of women who eats yams during pregnancy takes part in a chain of care and tradition that links them materially and symbolically to their mothers and grandmothers before them.

All School Handshake

Text:

“Okay, so I went to a really small private high school and it was a really tight-knit community and to start the to, uh, kick off the school year, we’d have the all-school handshake. So we’d essentially all line up the student body, shoulder to shoulder, along the perimeter of the formal gardens, with the headmaster at one end. And then the headmaster and the entire school president would stand side by side and flip a coin. And if it was heads, they would go to the right, and if it was tails, they would go to the left, or whichever way.

Context:

This was a ritual the informant participated in every year at her small private boarding school in Illinois. The tradition is held at the beginning of each school year as a formal opening ceremony for the entire school. It’s set in the formal gardens, and the coin flip, she noted, decided which way the handshake procession would go, injecting an element of chance into what was otherwise a very ordered tradition.

Analysis
The all-school handshake is a ritual of initiation and collective renewal — a physical enactment of the social ties that constitute the school as a community. By having each member shake the hand of every other member, the tradition performs a kind of annual social contract; each participant touching every other participant materializes the school becoming a web of mutual relationships. The coin flip is especially interesting as a ritual element—it adds a moment of chance to an otherwise highly ordered event, reminding participants that the direction of the community is, in part, determined by forces beyond any individual’s control, and that all are equally subject to that uncertainty.

Wisconsin State Fair

Text:

“I think about our state fairs. Um, and, you know, like one of the biggest things is like, you know, like cheese curds and things like that, and that comes from, you know, the fact that we, you know, pride ourselves on our dairy agriculture and things like that. And then, you know, beer is so, so popular in Milwaukee. There are so many different brands that have come out of Milwaukee that do beer, but it’s like such a popular thing to drink at these festivals.”

Context: 

The informant is originally from Wisconsin and, when asked which folk groups he identifies with, reflected on Wisconsin’s relationship with food. It’s officially considered “America’s Dairyland” and leads the United States in cheese and dairy production. Supporting these foods is almost synonymous with supporting the state’s agricultural workers and products. 

Analysis: 

State fairs function as festivals of regional folk identity, offering a ritualized space where communities can celebrate and distinguish themselves from other regions. For Wisconsin, food is the primary medium of self-expression: cheese curds are a strong signifier of agricultural heritage, and Milwaukee beer has a deep history within German brewing culture. As the informant details, these items are regarded with communal pride. It would be considered ‘foodways’ in which food production, preparation, and consumption transmit and represent cultural values. The state fair on stage is the most public example of this, amplified by the strong agricultural and regional belonging that collectively constitute the state’s identity.