Category Archives: general

Arctic Fox

The Story:

“When I was in third grade, I moved to a different part of the city and changed schools. The first book we read in class was The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Our teacher used an origami activity to tie into the book and taught us how to make origami foxes. In the class, we used orange origami paper, but since that class I have made the origami foxes out of whatever resources I had around- like i did in class on Thursday!”

Reflection:

Reflection:

The informant’s story was a good example of folk art when mixed with personal memory and communal creativity. The emphasis on the folk art being created with “whatever resources I had around” is an example of making do with whatever is at hand. This draws back to the importance of folk art, since it essentially is the presentation of messages or historical context via a multitude of mediums. Furthermore, the folk art and its prevalence in the informant’s life shows how the folk art, despite the material used to make it, will always carry the historical and contextual significance when being recreated and taught onto other individuals. The story exemplifies the folkloresque of the integration type. The origami fox activity is an attempt at a connection between book and another tangible media form, yet seems folkloric as it allows the opportunity for the children to form shared connected ideals and emotions of the origami.

Kola Nut Offering

Age: 20

The Story:

So this story is about the kola nut. It’s not really about the nut itself, it’s an offering. The kola nut is the center of the prayer, and the prayer revolves around the core of Igbo tradition.

We believe in three chis. There’s Chukwu, which is God. And then there’s chi, which is like your guardian angel. My great-grandfather would break the kola nut in his house before he left the house. The prayer invokes your chi, invokes Chukwu to guide your steps. It also invokes an internal ethics, don’t do to someone what you wouldn’t want done to you. That’s the traditional religious version.

When someone comes to visit you, you don’t do anything until the kola nut is broken by the owner of the house. By breaking it, you’re signifying that whatever you do in the house will not harm the others. Usually the oldest male present breaks it. At events, the kola nut is broken as a symbol of peaceful coexistence. But in some Igbo traditions, only women with titles can break it.

At weddings, the nut is divided into two. The father of the bride or the bride’s kinsmen offer the kola nut to the guests. There’s a prayer for the couple to have children. If it breaks into four segments, that’s a good omen, it means the couple will have luck, lots of babies. The kola nut affirms the union of families.

Reflection:

The informant’s story reminds me of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) framework. The kola nut ceremony has Turner’s “two poles of the symbolic”: a sensory pole (the nut, the breaking) and an ideological pole (prayer to Chukwu, peaceful coexistence). When the nut breaks into four segments, the ritual is complete and there is a superstition grants peace and mutual existence between the two parties. The “three chis” reveal how ritual encodes worldview.

Additonally, I believe this ritual combats the Western framework of ownership. The kola nut ceremony cannot be copyrighted, as it belongs to the Igbo community; however, ICH designation risks “fossilization” or freezing a practice that was never frozen. The informant’s great-grandfather did it. And the informant plans to do so in the near future, so the chain of the tradition won’t be broken.

Spooky School Tale

Context:

Age: 19

Occupation: College Student

Location: Los Angeles, CA

The Story:

One of my friends lives  right next to this  old, like, middle school, it’s called Hogs Hollow, But because  one of my friends lived right next to there, and we would hanging out there, and one day after school was over we would sometimes like pop the fence and run around in there because they would leave all the doors open, so you could kind of just wander around in there. 

There were all these kinds of maze-like passages and stuff. I hadn’t been into the school but some of my friends had and so we decided to go in there and we were kind of wandering around it was dark and we decided to split up just because we thought it would make it more scary, you know, like, because we knew it was a bad idea. Then somebody heard a voice. And everybody started freaking out and running, and one of my friends  tripped over something and fell into a bunch of equipment, and there was all these loud noises and stuff, and everybody got freaked out.

Everybody went back to school and was talking about it, so it’s become a little bit more of a known thing at my school. I was kind of happy to be in sort of like the founding group of this our own little legend of this unknown myth. There were also some embellishments, I remember some stories saying we heard the voice at exactly 3 a.m. which I don’t think was true, but started going around, and that somebody saw like a little  middle schooler running around. It was kind of fun to see it like in real time develop into this sort of legend. 

Reflection:

When originally hearing this story from the informant, I thought it was interesting that the that the school operated as a contemporary legend that is set in the real world. The informant’s clarity of no one else being present but the friend group, but the rumor still spreading around the school is an example of metafolklore. Therefore, the location of this story, the school, starts ordinarily, but through the metafolklore and different versions created and spread, becomes saturated with fear and inauthenticity. Further, I think the real aspects of the story, such as the group splitting up and it being late at night also pave the way for embellishments of the story to amp it up in metafolklore. Although no time of the arrival was given and it was never shared which voice was heard, speculators assumed it was at 3AM and the voice of an old middle schooler was heard to fit the narrative of other folk stories they may have heard before. The informants proximity to the story allows for a social bonding factor for those within the folk group, but also ritualized performance that enacts group identity and belonging. 

La Sihuanaba

Text:

“It’s called La Sihuanaba — it’s like this beautiful woman that sits by the river, and she would oftentimes come and lure men that were either drunk or cheating on their wives. And then she would turn into this monster. She was basically punished by God to be this ugly creature because she was too vain. I don’t know if it’s kind of similar to, um, the one where the king looks at himself in the river too much and he’s too vain. But yeah, so she basically just lures men in and kills them if they’re not well-behaved. And then she also got punished with a son who is very treacherous.”

Context:

La Sihanaba is a widely circulated supernatural legend across Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. The informant’s family is Salvadoran, and the moral tales that he reflected on were often very vivid for his mother.  La Sihuanaba belongs to a cluster of feminine supernatural figures in Latin American folklore, most notably La Llorona, the “Weeping Woman,” a ghost who wanders waterways and targets children.

Analysis:

The recurring figure of a powerful, marginal woman who tests the moral fitness of those she encounters is recognizable across world folklore as the archetype of the Crone — a figure who sits at the crossroads of wisdom, danger, and social judgment. La Siihuanaba activates this archetype while complicating it in instructive ways. Unlike many Crone figures whose threat is purely spiteful or generalized, her targeting is morally precise: she punishes sobriety violations and marital infidelity, making her less a monster than a supernatural enforcer of communal norms. What gives her lasting narrative power is the irony embedded in her origin: she was herself condemned by God for vanity, and is punished to seek out and condemn that very excess in others. She is a flawed injuster, shaped by her own transgression. This reflexive quality — the punished becoming the punisher— invites an interpretive richness that sustains stories across generations.

New Years First-Footing

Text: 

“Right when the clock hits 12, before anyone else can go in the house—because, um, for my family, my dad’s the only man in the family—so before we can go anywhere else in the house, besides, like, the couch where we are watching the New Year’s Eve countdown, my dad has to walk through every single room. Like, you have to be the 1st person in every single room. And I don’t know where this tradition started or like how it started, but that’s just what my family does.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student who shared this New Year’s tradition when reflection on family customs she grew up with. Her father, being the only son on his father’s side, is a central factor to why he carries out this role each year. The tradition has been practiced for as long as she can remember, experiencing both affection and mild dissonance — recognizing what she called its “patriarchal undertone,” but resolved that the spirit of the practice is one of care and protection for the household. 

Analysis:

This tradition closely resembles a Scottish custom, “First-Footing”, in which the first person to cross a threshold after midnight on New Year’s determines the household’s fortune for the year ahead. The gendered dimension reflects a broader folk belief that masculine presence is recognized as protection or a domestic blessing. The informant’s example, in particular, is compelling because of her own ambivalence: partaking in a ritual she neither fully understands nor uncritically accepts. This speaks to the binding power of informal family traditions. Unlike institutionally maintained folklore, family customs without explicit cultural ties derive their authority from the intimacy of the folk group itself. The informant doesn’t need to know the ritual’s origin or logic, as her being part of the family is meaningful enough to trust its intention and carry it forward.