Ramadan and the Ritual Celebration of Eid Alfutr

Nationality: Arab
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 20, 2017
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

I’m from Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia.

Piece:

Ramadan is like a whole month where everyone just, they fast from like very early in the morning ‘til like early in the evening. So from, from the sunrise to sunset basically. And they fast from like eating – they don’t eat anything, they don’t drink anything. And it’s a very like spiritual month where you just have like a lot of like, you know, religious tv shows and songs and stuff like that.

And then, after the month is over- the first day of the following month- it’s like Christmas in Christianity, So it’s like a big event where everybody is celebrating the end of the month and uh, I think it’s very interesting because every family basically like… wait you’re a vegetarian right? So this is not happiness for you. Every family has to kill a sheep, just like one sheep, and it has a spiritual meaning and it’s like a sacrifice you do to God to show that you’re grateful that the month is over, that you’re alive and doing well, and just thankful for that month.

And your family particularly partake in this?

All families do, and what they do is that they take the, okay it’s like one animal that’s killed. Most people do it at home, you bring the animal alive and kill it. Which is kind of… as kids, you would see that and were just kind of shocked (ha ha). It happens every year. Sometimes you’re allowed to buy the animal and take it to a butcher shop or something like that and they would of the you know, the rest of the work. Then the meat is divided into three portions- one third goes to family itself, another third to neighbors and relatives, and you know other people around the neighborhood, and the third portion goes to poor people, you know people who can’t buy an animal or can’t do that. So… yeah I think that’s the biggest celebration maybe.

When you guys take the meat, how do you package it? And do you have a physical hand in distributing the meat to poor people? 

It’s cut and put into bags, and like freezers and stuff like that. And I remember when I was a kid, my mom would give me like a bunch of bags and she would say “go to that neighbor” or “that house and knock on the door and give them this meat.” And then my dad would take the rest and he would go to like poor neighborhoods and distribute the meat to the poor people there. Nowadays, even butcher shops will do that- they will give the family their portion and do the rest of it- distribute it to the poor people so that you have a more convenient ways of doing it.

Piece Background Information:

Informant already mentioned within their piece that they learned and practice Ramadan, as well as the ritual celebration of Eid Alfutr, due to the influence of his culture, parents, family, and school.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

Ramadan is celebrated in the ninth month of Islamic calendar, which sees each month’s beginning at the sighting of the full moon, thus making it an Earth cycle ritual. By fasting everyday from sunrise to sunset, Muslims and those partaking in this tradition are reminded of the suffering of the less fortunate in the world. This fasting emphasizes the Muslim ideal of strengthening their connection with Allah through exercising self control, thereby cleansing their minds, bodies, and spirits and also lends itself to this informant’s other accounts such as not believing in wearing a physical/tangible object for protection against the evil eye and instead focusing on the mind (see: The Evil/Bad Eye and Arab Folk Beliefs on Protection Against It).

I also found it interesting that the informant noted how the whole process of butchering the sacrifice and splitting up the portions of the meat has become a lot easier- butchers will handle not only the butchering, but the distribution as well. On the one hand, this probably gives more incentive to partake in the tradition each year, as it makes the ritual much simpler, but it is also important to note that it is as a result of modernity.

Pineapple origin

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Tagalog

Background Information: Vanessa is a Filipino American who grew up in Texas. She learned this story in English from her twin sister, who had heard it from their grandmother in Tagalog.

Vanessa: “Um, so my grandma told me this story about the origin of the pineapple. Well, she told my twin sister, and then my twin sister told me, and, the… basic origin of it is that there’s this little girl, who is really lazy, and her grandma keeps asking her to do stuff… So she’ll be like, “Pinya, could you go… could you go, um, wash the dishes”, and like she’ll find later that the dishes haven’t been done and Pinya is playing. And her grandma will be like “why didn’t you do it?”, and Pinya will be like, “I didn’t see them… I couldn’t see the dishes”. And that’ll happen over and over again until her grandma’s finally like, “fine, since you keep saying you, um, you have no eyes, you’ll have hundreds of eyes all over you from now on.” And she left and when she came back she found her granddaughter had turned into a pineapple with a lot of eyes all over it.”

Thoughts: Interestingly, this story seems to serve two functions. On one hand, it is an origin story. According to Vanessa, the story is part of a larger, widely known but unofficial collection of similar Tagalog origin stories known as alamat. On the other hand, the story seems to also have a lesson. It was told by Vanessa’s grandmother to her sister, so it seems the message here for children is to not be lazy, and to complete the tasks assigned to them. 

Sparrow’s gift

Nationality: Japenese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: China
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

A friend of mine, who’s an international exchange student from Japan now currently studying in China, contributes this story. She read this story from a Japanese traditional story book, but she says this story is actually quite well-known. We interviewed in Chinese so the following is only rough translation of what she shared.

Story:

”

There were two poor old women living as neighbors in the village. One day, one of the old lady found an injured sparrow in her yard, so she took in the sparrow and took good care of it. Everyone in her family as well as the neighbors laughed at her for “seeking for troubles”, but she ignored them. She fed the sparrow rice and water every day, and tended its wound with great care. Days after, the sparrow was fully healed and the old lady let it flew away. However, the sparrow came back a while later with some seeds in its mouth. The sparrow left the seeds to the old lady and took off again. The old lady took the seeds and planted it in her yard. The next morning, where she planted the seeds now there has fully grown trees of countless gourds. Each gourd was as huge as a human head. The old lady took a gourd and opened it — the gourd was full of rice! The overjoyed lady then shared the rice and her amazing story with the neighbors and friends.

The other old woman of course learned the story. Since her family blamed her for not able to do anything for them while the lady next door get herself and her family trees of rice, she decided to do the same thing — tend for the sparrows and get the seeds. For the next few days, she threw stones at the sparrows stopped by in her yard and successfully hit one. However, to make sure she would get the magical seeds, she continued to do so till she got three injured sparrows in total. She then tends for the wounded sparrows just as her neighbor did, and let them go once they were healed. The three sparrows did come back with seeds, and the old woman planted them in her yard as well. The next day, just as she expected, there grew trees of huge gourds. She took gourds inside with her family and cut them open, excited to store all those rice for themselves. However, it was not rice in it but poisonous snacks and bugs. The woman and her family were all bite and died.

”

Thoughts:

Animal tales seems to be popular i Japan. In fact, this informant shared several animal tales with me, and every each of these tales were seemed to aim at teaching people a moral lesson through animals — this story would be a lesson of not to be jealous and greedy but to be kind. The ending of the story seemed to be a bit extreme but I think only through exaggeration the folklore could send out the message and warn people. A funny thing is, there is a similar Chinese folklore that every thing is the same except the old women were brothers in the Chinese version.

Man Door Hand Hook Car Door

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Information:

Joey Tan is a student at the University of Southern California studying Interactive Media and Game Design. She has a Chinese background, and is originally from Toronto, Ontario until moving to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Story:

“Ok so, so, a man and a woman were in a car and they drove to a forest to you know get the sexy times on and they were like making out, like you know light touching, and suddenly they heard a strange noise outside. And they stopped and the guy’s like ‘what is that sound?’ and the girl’s like ‘I don’t know I couldn’t really hear it that well’. So they went back to making out and getting it on, but suddenly they heard the strange noise again. This time they stop and the guy’s like ‘I’m gonna go check it out you stay here, don’t let anyone in, even if it’s someone asking for help. Don’t let anyone in.’ the girl says ‘yes’. So the guy leaves, the girl stays in the car, she doesn’t hear anything. She stays there for 10-15 minutes. She starts to worry because she’s hearing nothing and she’s like when’s he gonna come back. Suddenly she hears a long banging from the back of the car. Like from behind the car. She turns and sees nothing there but the banging continues. She sees someone scratching on the back of the car ‘Let me in’. She’s reminded of what the guy said and she doesn’t let them in. She stays there and after awhile the noise stopped. She didn’t know what to do, she ends up waiting until morning until it’s safer so she goes to sleep. She wakes up the next morning, the forest is still silent, there’s no one around, and she decides to leave to find her boyfriend. Just then, as soon as she left the car, she turned and noticed that man door hand hook car door. The end.”

Q: Where did you hear this from?

“My friend was sleeping over and he was like do you wanna hear this scary story and I’m like yeah. It took an hour to tell it which is the worst part.”

Q: Is this supposed to be messing around?

“He couldn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes straight, it was crazy.”

Analysis:

The informant mentioned that she did not know the origin of this story because she had only heard this from a friend. After doing more research, I found out that this “story” is actually a “meme” from a website called 4chan. Apparently, the original poster of this story wanted to make a parody of a creepypasta (a website for horror/scary stories, very much a part of internet culture) story, and by doing so created the “man door hand hook car” meme.

 

Tamale Recipe

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English

Informant Information:

Clerisse Cornejo is a student at the University of Southern California. She comes from a mixed background (Japanese/Mexican), and is originally from Fontana, CA.

Traditional Recipe:

So on the other side of the family which is majorly Mexican like Mexican. We always try to get together on Christmas Eve and watch our tia make tamales. It takes a few hours and sometimes we help if she wants it. So the recipe is like masa on the outside which is like a corn based paste I guess that forms the outside of the tamale inside they’re usually stuffed with chicken, beef, or pork, and homemade chile. So at this point it’s all about getting the masa which you can make yourself or buy from somewhere else. I think my aunt usually buys it or she might even switch between the two actually. Then they soak the corn husks in hot water and this makes the casing around the entire tamale including the masa. It’s like a second layer. Once the corn husks are boiled they remove them from the water, add the masa, and fillings and spread it throughout consistently. Afterwards they’re folded in the proper shape and they’re steamed in this big pot called an oya. And they sit there for awhile and cook. After a certain amount of time we remove them and they’re ready to eat. I don’t put sauce but it’s typical for somebody to put more chile/another topping on their tamales.”

Q: Would you say this is a traditional/standard recipe?

“Definitely. I don’t think there’s too many unique ways to make tamales outside of picking different ingredients. We use pretty conventional ingredients so they’re pretty normal tamales.”

Q: Why on Christmas Eve?

“I think it’s because they take so long to prepare and make. So, families often make them for a special time of the year like birthdays or specific holidays they celebrate with their families.”

Analysis:

The informant’s recipe, upon further investigation, is fairly standard to other authentic tamale recipes. The only difference is that other recipes call for more chile oil/sauce. I was also able to find out that an “oya”, as the informant calls it, is actually a dutch oven.