La Llorona

Nationality: Hispanic
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, California
Performance Date: 4/24/21
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background

Informant is a student at USC who is currently living in the surrounding area. The Informant and Interviewer have been friends for around one year and met through the housing application process. 

Context

Informant discusses the La Llorona legend, with the Interviewer throwing in a possible variant of the traditional legend. As classes are online, the conversation took place over discord.

Transcript

Informant: “La Llorona is just like a woman who had her kids drowned in a river, and so uh, I don’t know if it’s like a specific river or if it’s any river. But be careful around rivers because if you hear a woman crying she’ll like drag you in, especially for like children, like she’ll drag children in, because she’s mourning the children that she lost.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, that’s a classic, I,  that story fucks with my head still. I heard that La Llorona, like if you hear her, like only cries, and you don’t approach her, you’ll have a shorter lifespan.”

Informant: “Huh, I uh, don’t think that’s a part of the story. Or at least I wasn’t told it like that.”

Interviewer: “Yeah I only know the La Llorona story from like a horror YouTube channel, so I’m probably wrong.”

Informant: “Haha yeah I don’t know about that one.”

Thoughts

La Llorona is an incredibly popular South American urban legend that has proliferated beyond the culture of origin, hence how I found it. The informant’s retelling had all the core details that existed in the internet retelling I heard, but the internet retelling had a few embellishments. The aforementioned shortened lifespan was one, and the fact that La Llorona wears a white wedding dress is another, as she drowned her kids when she found out her husband cheated on her. I think the version I heard had a few added details to get more attention on the internet compared to the original version, but stories evolve over time, so who is to say which story is more valid.

Citations

http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/la-llorona-46/

Maxwello, and Maxwello. “University of Southern California.” USC Digital Folklore Archives, 19 Nov. 2020, uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/la-llorona-46/.

Pali Highway

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses a superstition about taking meat over the Pali, the possible consequences, and where the legend stems from.

Transcript

Informant: “You’re not supposed to take pork over the Pali [highway on Oahu].”

Interviewer: “Do you know why?”

Informant: “So, I forget. But they say that your car will stall if you go over they Pali, but it got something to do with warrior being pushed off the edge? Or something like that? Or the sacrifices that were made? Something to do with that, they had the war right over there and they just pushed the warriors over the Pali. They were just throwing them off the Pali, King kamehameha. Imua. There’s a reason behind it.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, I heard there was also like, this thing where on the old Pali, that if you broke these rules, these like bloody ghost warriors would run at your car and try to make you crash or something.”

Informant: “Oh jeez, I don’t know about that one, that’s probably just the old Pali highway, but no one uses it now.”

Thoughts

The pali highway is situated beside a mountain where a very famous Hawaiian battle took place. King Kamehameha, the ali’i who united all the Hawaiian islands, defeated the reigning monarch of Oahu at this mountain by cornering his warriors and pushing them off the mountain. The spirits of these fallen warriors not only haunt the place where they died, but patrol the island in military formation. These spirits are known as night marchers, and will kill anyone who looks at their sacred marches. This legend and pulley legend scare me to no end, but I’m a vegetarian so I never have meat in my car so I never have to worry about it.

The White Lady

Nationality: Asian
Age: 56
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses the urban legend of Pele, the goddess attributed to making the Hawaiian islands. Informant speaks on how the encounter will go, what Pele will look like, and what will happen if you disrespect her.

Transcript

Informant: “Ooo, what about the white lady?”

Interviewer: “The what lady?”

Informant: “The white lady, if you see the white lady, you have to pick her up. If you don’t pick her up-”

Interviewer: “Oh, Pele!”

Informant: “Yeah, so she comes out as either a young beautiful woman, or whatever, but if you don’t pick her up she’ll end up in the back seat of your car.”

Interviewer: “What happens then? I heard that-”

Informant: “I think she’ll either stay there until you go to where she wants to go or when you notice that she’s there, you’ll turn around and she’ll be gone. But after you see her you gotta make offerings, like food and drinks so you don’t make her mad.”

Thoughts

    The story of the white lady is an incredibly common myth in Hawaii. Even though Pele is supposed to only live on the Big Island, tales of encountering her on all islands are a relatively common affair. I personally have never encountered the white lady while driving alone, but I have family members who swear to have seen her. Nobody I know says she has gotten into their vehicle though. While I respect this story and the culture it comes from, In my mind I chalk most of these up to just seeing a random woman wearing white while driving, as that is not an uncommon outfit on Oahu by any means.

Bubonic Plague In Hawaii

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses a friend who could see the spirits of those who died from the bubonic plague in Hawaii under restaurant row. Informant then goes into how the plague was brought to Hawaii and what the afflicted did.

Transcript

Informant: “You know what, they had the bubonic plague, right? In Chinatown, they had a lot of people die, and what they did was they buried them into a mass grave in Chinatown, underneath restaurant row, so a friend’s attorney, a friend’s secretary, could see, could see everything. She could see all these massive graves and just bodies piled on top of each other.

Interviewer: “Oh, damn… so what, what like-”

Informant: “And it is scary though, like at the parking lot.”

Interviewer: “So it was like decaying bodies of the bubonic plague? Just bodies on bodies on bodies of people with the bubonic plague?”

Informant: “Yeah it was just, just like one mass burial in the black plague times. In chinatown, it was bad. Whaling ships came in and brought it, and people where we live, where you guys used to live, they said that people in the neighborhood, the families wanted to die together, so they hiked all the way up into Aiea, where we live, and that’s where they all died. They wanted to die together so they died together with the plague.”

Thoughts

Restaurant row used to be the party place of Oahu, it was the happening spot where everyone would go to get plastered and party. While restaurant row stands virtually abandoned now and was in its prime before I was alive, I had no idea about this side of history until the informant told me about it. The bubonic plague outbreak in Hawaii was never formally taught to us in school, so I had no idea the ground below restaurant row, which is next to a major roadway, is inundated with corpses. Also, I found the part about families going into the mountains to die together was morbidly sweet, like a final gesture of love while they all slowly and painfully died.

Beads of Courage

Nationality: Asian
Age: 44
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the auntie of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has been working as a medical nurse for 16 years.

Context

Informant discusses recurring interactions between patients and nurses at the hospital they work at. This event takes place over the course of a child’s stay at a hospital, especially if they are undergoing extensive treatment like chemotherapy. The conversation happened over FaceTime, as the informant was on their lunch break at work when the conversation took place.

Transcript

Interviewer: “How about like if um, like if a small kid like comes into a hospital like how do you guys make them comfortable?”

Informant: “Oh like bribery?”

Interviewer: “Yeah! Yeah! Like how do you bribe them?”

Informant: “Like toys? We give them toys or, like, like when they’re getting a procedure or… Oh! How about like the beads? Like the beads of courage? That’s pretty consistent. Ok so for you know chemotherapy patients?”

Interviewer: “Mmm hmm.”

Informant: “Uh when they get procedures done like, they’ll have like uhh like specific beads and they’ll make a necklace out of it. So like if they get a shot or like chemotherapy or a medication, they’ll get beads for each specific thing, and I can actually grab you the sheet thing, well, it’s actually like a foundation that provides the beads, you can look it up online, called beads of courage. 

Interviewer: “Cool alright, and the beads represent..?”

Informant: “One bead will represent like a medication, one bead a needle stick, or like a point access. Like each procedure, they get one bead for each thing, and then at the end of their treatment, like they have this long necklace, and it’s like a remembrance of what they’ve been through, yeah.”

Interviewer: “Aww that’s super sweet, yeah.”

Thoughts

I had not heard of beads of courage until this interview, and after listening to my auntie talk about them and learning about their organization, it seems like a sweet memento for a period of extreme anguish. According to the beads of courage website, they “are a non-profit that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and teens coping with serious illness, their families, and the clinicians who care for them through our Arts-in-Medicine Programs” (Beads of Courage, 2021). The organization has been around since 2005 and works with hundreds of hospitals internationally. Beads of courage are not specific to the hospital my auntie works at, but this shared tradition shared internationally across hospitals and their workers shows how international traditions can be. The sentiment of beads of courage exists beyond cultures, the sentiment of receiving a physical item that signifies everything a patient has gone through is recognizable cross-culturally. I enjoy the statement and mission of beads of courage, and think it brings families and patients a source of joy and strength during objectively terrible times.

For more information about beads of courage, visit their website:

Home

Beads of Courage, Beads of Courage Inc., 2021, www.beadsofcourage.org/.