I was so impressed to watch my children gently, ever gently, patiently, without judgment or consternation, lean over the kitchen table with soft #2B pencils pouring over the music scores with my father. The girls explained to him that in spirituals, a lot of the songs are coded instructions on how to escape to freedom, for example, in “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” the drinking gourd refers to the Big Dipper and the North Star; in other songs, the River Jordan represents the Ohio River, the last river to cross before reaching freedom in Canada; and Canaan means Canada because once slaves made it to Canada, they could not be sent back, as they could from the northern states.
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Written by frances on January 19, 2012
I suddenly realized that I had taken all those animated and claymation Christmas specials—Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman—as ethnographic films. That is how I learned about Christmas.
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Written by frances on November 17, 2011
Until I received this infusion of my favorite rice, I simply did not have the heart to write aboutJapanese New Year or Oshogatsu. I discretely tried to get myself invited to the Aramakis’ here in town, but they are going to the Shimouras’. All I could think was how much I missed making the rounds with my parents to all their Japanese-American friends’ homes to visit and to eat our way into the new year.
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Written by frances on November 17, 2011
An English teacher at Huron High School used one of my columns to stimulate classroom discussion of a Maya Angelou book they were reading — which was so lively it spilled into a second day, and even more impressive, students who normally never talked in class really got into the discussion.
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Written by frances on October 3, 2011
Looking into the eyes of another and engaging in their arts and learning their language are such important ways to get to know another person, another people, and to help us get past the easy labels and fears.
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Written by frances on September 23, 2011
The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is this Monday. That means mooncakes! A harvest festival, the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is a Chinese (Zhong Qiu Jie),Vietnamese (Tet Trung Thu) and Korean (Chusok) festival that celebrates the end of the harvest, family and food. It’s sort of like Thanksgiving (without the turkey), Octoberfest(without the beer) and Sukkot (without the tent). It is always celebrated on the largest full moon of the year, the Harvest Moon.
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Written by frances on September 17, 2011
In the hubbub of back to school preparations—registration, green emergency cards, forms, fees, textbooks, pictures, school supplies, backpacks, lunchboxes, scheduling extracurriculars, new lunch and snack ideas, catching up with old friends, etc., I keep ending up in the bentobox or lunchbox section of every store I enter, be it the Chinese grocery store, the Japanese bookstore, Target, Walmart, CVS, or Busch’s grocery store. I confess. I have a fetish for bento boxes. A fondness for tiffins. A weakness for Tupperwares. Don’t get me started on lunchboxes.
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Written by frances on September 10, 2011
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