Academic literature on the topic 'Grandmothers – Anecdotes'

Kunyaza is a traditional sexual technique reported in some regions of Central Africa that aims to trigger peri-orgasmic fluid production. A personal narrative experience of a 29-year-old unmarried woman from Kenya suggested that this particular technique may have also been practiced in Kenya for a long time. Indeed, an oral tradition about “how to make Lake Victoria”, a peculiar local expression used to indicate peri-orgasmic fluid production, is reported here. This tradition is transmitted from grandmothers to granddaughters and concerns not only fluid emission but also teachings on personal hygiene, sexual interactions with a partner, and, interestingly, the importance of the woman’s sexual pleasure. In this narrative case report, we compared anecdotes and personal experiences with literature evidence about herbal medicine and traditional practices, suggesting the presence of a particularly woman-centered sexual culture in some more sex-positive ethnic groups in Kenya.

I examine processes of cultural accommodation and maintenance of the Sephardic tradition as reflected in anecdotes of the generation who immigrated to Israel. The anecdotes reflect traditions and beliefs of Ladino speakers; I study their folkloric and linguistic aspects, while exposing the elements that create humor and reflect dominant social norms. The anecdotes present the obvious and the concealed tensions in Israeli society, yet they have a universal dimension: social conflicts in contacts between cultures, between ethnic groups, between the generation of the parents and that of the children and grandchildren, between next-door neighbors and between diasporas which converge in one social habitat. The article examines elements of performance, including the place of the storyteller in the storytelling situation and the techniques that generate laughter and identification with a marginal group: the group of Ladino speakers in Israel, as they clash with the hegemonic power in the Israeli society.

AbstractI was brought up in an East European Jewish family where jokes and anecdotes are necessary elements of every conversation. I must have been around seven years old when I heard my aunt telling a joke to my mother about two funny-named men, Sisyphus and Oedipus. I was a "perceptive kid" - as my grandmother used to call me - who normally understood jokes, even those which I was not supposed to. This one, however, made no sense to me. I could have just given up upon it, but those names fascinated me: Sisyphus and Oedipushad never heard of them before. So I asked my mother who these two people were and if she would explain the joke to me. As it soon turned out, it was one of those "nicht vor dem Kind"1 jokes, playing on Freudian connotations. However, I was used to the openness-policy of my father, so I expected an honest explanation. My mother had no difficulties in explaining the story of Sisyphus: a child of that age can easily relate to someone who tries to achieve something that is seemingly impossible to do. But how can anyone explain the story of Oedipus to a seven-year-old? That was the first time I heard the name Oedipus. It is only now, many years later, that I finally understand Oedipus' story, too.

In reflecting on the relationship between ongoing Canadian colonialism and sacred indigenous spaces, the author considers different conceptions of constitutionalism and of law from the location of Gaamitigomishkag, a sacred site for four Anishinaabe communities (including the author’s) in the Boundary Waters area of Treaty #3. The inquiry is framed by the author’s relationship with his grandmother. In the first section he recalls what it was like learning to learn Anishinaabe law from her. He invites his readers to join him in shifting their focus from what to how they learn something (perhaps radically) new. In the second section he shares an anecdote about learning from his grandmother on one particular summer day at Gaamitigomishkag. In the third section, he challenges readers to deploy the interrogative shift from what to how through a narrative that begins to disclose structural differences between Canadian and Anishinaabe constitutionalisms, and thus, their respective systems of law. Given the narrative form of much of this article, readers have to work for their meanings. Each arc in the third section’s narrative begins at Gaamitigomishkag, but discloses very different ways that peoples might constitute themselves as political community in, near and through it. A critical question the article poses is not what, but rather how should one think about community in this space? The article ends in the present where Canadian constitutionalism has been smashed on top of Anishinaabe constitutionalism. The author is left at Gaamitigomishkag reflecting on which community(ies) he belongs to. He invites the reader to consider whether he decides. Dans le cadre de ses réflexions sur la relation entre le colonialisme canadien qui se poursuit et les espaces autochtones sacrés, l’auteur examine diverses conceptions du constitutionnalisme et du droit depuis l’emplacement de « Gaamitigomishkag », qui est un site sacré pour quatre collectivités anishinaabe de la région du Traité no 3 relatif aux eaux limitrophes. L’auteur mène son analyse autour de sa relation avec sa grand-mère. Dans la première section, il explique à quoi ressemblait l’apprentissage de la loi anishinaabe auprès d’elle. Il demande aux lecteurs de modifier radicalement leur approche et de mettre l’accent, comme il l’a fait, sur la méthode d’apprentissage plutôt que sur l’objet. Dans la deuxième section, il raconte une anecdote au sujet de la leçon apprise de sa grand-mère un jour d’été à Gaamitigomishkag. Dans la troisième section (qui est aussi la plus longue), il demande à nouveau aux lecteurs de passer du quoi au comment au moyen d’un récit qui fait ressortir les différences structurelles entre les constitutionnalismes du Canada et de la Nation anishinaabe et, par conséquent, leurs systèmes de droit respectifs. Étant donné qu’une bonne partie de l’article est présentée sous forme de récit, les lecteurs doivent déployer des efforts pour trouver le sens des messages qui y sont exprimés. Chaque arc du récit débute à Gaamitigomishkag, mais révèle des façons bien différentes dont les peuples peuvent se constituer en communauté politique à l’intérieur et à proximité de cet arc. L’auteur cherche à savoir non pas à quoi, mais plutôt comment réfléchir dans cet espace. L’article se termine à l’époque actuelle, où le constitutionnalisme canadien est substitué à celui de la Nation anishinaabeg. L’auteur se trouve alors à Gaamitigomishkag et cherche à savoir à quelle collectivité il appartient. Il invite le lecteur à se demander si une décision est effectivement prise à ce sujet.

В статье рассматриваются итоги интервьюирования, осуществленного авторами в сентябре 2018 г. среди китайских русских двух деревень городского округа Хэйхэ провинции Хэйлунцзян КНР - Хадаянь и Бяньцзян. Целью работы было выявление уровня и характера знания русского фольклорного репертуара представителями старшего и среднего поколений китайско-русских метисов данного региона. Целенаправленных фольклористических полевых исследований на этой территории проживания потомков русских в Китае ранее никогда не проводилось. Наиболее интересный результат работы с респондентами - запись сказки с сюжетами о глупых людях, которые в российской фольклористике принято называть анекдотами о пошехонцах, исполненной на китайском языке. Сказка записана от китайско-русского метиса во втором поколении, слышавшего ее в детстве от своей русской бабушки, которая в 1920-х гг. переехала с мужем-китайцем из с. Дим, находящегося на левом, российском берегу Амура, в Сяодинцзы (старое название с. Бяньцзян). Авторами статьи дается транскрибированный текст сказки, в том числе на пиньинь, перевод на русский язык и сопоставительный анализ ее сюжетики с русской сибирской сказочной традицией, который демонстрирует уникальность сказочного повествования об «Ивашке», отражающей особенности локальной фольклорной традиции китайско-русских метисов КНР российско-китайского пограничья. This article discusses the results of interviews conducted by the authors in September 2018 with Chinese Russians in two villages of the Heihe Region of Heilongjiang Province, China - Hadayan and Bianjiang. The aim of the work was to identify the level and nature of knowledge of Russian folklore on the part of the older and middle generation of Chinese-Russian Métis in the region. Such field studies of Russian descendants in China in this area have never been undertaken before. The most interesting result of working with respondents is the recording of a fairy tale performed in Chinese with plots about stupid people, which in Russian folklore are usually called anecdotes about Poshekhon people. The fairy tale was recorded from a second generation Chinese-Russian Métis who had heard it as a child from her Russian grandmother, who in the 1920s moved with her husband from the village of Dim, located on the left bank of the Amur River, to Xiaodingzi Village (the old name of Bianjiang Village). The authors of the article present a transcribed text of the tale, including Pinyin, a translation in Russian and a comparative analysis of its plot with the Russian Siberian fairy tale tradition. This demonstrates the uniqueness of the fairy tale about “Ivashka” that reflects the peculiarities of the local folklore tradition of Chinese-Russian Métis of the PRC who live in the Russian-Chinese borderland.

In this essay I analyze how the artifacts of questioning and listening became resourceful in the procedure of excavating the personal and political reasons behind the migration journey my maternal grandmother Voinha (who turned 100 years old on April 08th 2021 and passed away on March 06th 2022) embarked on in 1945 from Ananindeua and Belém (Amazon rainforest region) to Rio de Janeiro (BR); and further, my own immigration journey from Latin America to the Middle East and on to northern Europe, fifteen years ago. How coupling questioning with listening allowed an oppressed woman to speak for herself, fostering in this way dramaturgies that brought awareness to feminist empowerment as a means to tackle the colonial and patriarchal ways in which the Brazilian national identity, among many others, is constructed. The writing style is mainly anecdotal and based on conversations I had with Voinha on different occasions. The recordings of our last in-person encounter on September 15th 2018 became the foundation for the performance Feliz Aniversário, created primarily as a way of giving Voinha agency in telling her own migration journey. Excerpts of this audio and video footage will be further analyzed alongside this essay. The methodology adopted is autoethnography with the intention to offer nuanced, complex, and specific knowledge about particular lives, experiences and relationships (Adams, Jones, Ellis 2014). Within autoethnographical methodological tools, I delve on reflexivity with the aim of troubling the relationship between researchers ‘selves’ and ‘others’ and offering a re-examination of the paradigm modernity/coloniality as simultaneously shaped through specific articulations of race, gender and sexuality (Lugones 2007). The final intention is to analyze how turning back to my ancestors’ and my own experiences, identities, and their socio-political implications; how analyzing them according to gender and queer theories and from a decolonial perspective, could potentialize my current practice focused on autobiographical performance. One last important point to be acknowledged is my role as an artist-researcher examining the complex ethical and creative processes of working with intimate family memories, observing the growing necessity of developing dramaturgies of care and resistance (Malzacher 2008).

Many acting careers have a T0, that is a first time that corresponds neither to the simple chronology nor to any anecdotes, but events in which the theatre clearly manifests itself to them in the form of alignment between the represented reality and their own biography. In this sense, the beginnings of Ristori’s career are very little investigated. Instead, her condition as a figlia d’Arte (‘daughter of Art’; the imprinting of her grandmother Teresa Canossa Ristori), the debut in companies (Cavicchi, Rosa-Tranquilli and Moncalvo), and comic roles were decisive facts, as well as the approach to the leading role with Francesca da Rimini, to whom she lended her youth (14 years) and that exposed her to culture, Europe and personal independence. Thanks to some genealogical and biographical checks, by crossing a new 0-14 theatrography, the biographical profiles published before her death and the anecdotal self-narration of the actress, we try to identify the artistic legacy of these early years in the form of a personal dramaturgy of actor (realism, art of ‘transition’, intelligence of stage entrance).

Grandmothers exist in all societies. Especially in the non-western Majority World, where Elders are both highly respected and responsible for transmitting their knowledge to younger generations, there is extensive anecdotal evidence of Grandmothers’ role in health promotion and healing. However, due to Eurocentric and reductionist views of families and communities, in the extensive past research on maternal, child and adolescent health issues across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and in Indigenous societies in North America, Australia and New Zealand, scant attention has been given to the role of Grandmothers. This paper addresses this oversight and supports the imperative to decolonize health promotion in the non-western world by building on non-western worldviews, roles and values. Based on an eclectic body of both published and gray literature, this review presents extensive evidence of Grandmothers’ involvement across the life cycle of women and children and of the similar core roles that they play across cultures. While in some cases Grandmothers have a negative influence, in most cases their involvement and support to younger women and children is beneficial in terms of both their advisory and their caregiving roles. For future research and interventions addressing maternal, child and adolescent health, the conclusions of this review provide strong support for: adoption of a family systems framework to identify both gender-specific and generation-specific roles and influence; and the inclusion of Grandmothers in community health promotion programs dealing with different phases of the life cycle of women and children.

Candan Turkkan’s Feeding Istanbul: The Political Economy of Urban Provisioning begins with an intimate anecdote about her grandmother’s experi­ences of hunger during the Second World War and the centrality of bread in her family. She reflects on the fragility of food systems that belie appearances of food abundance in urban areas and the lasting psychological impacts of hunger. This personal story introduces the focus of the book: the political economies of urban food provisioning in Istanbul. Feeding Istanbul chronologically discusses food provisioning in Istanbul from the 16th century to the present. Turkkan uses an impressive range of sources, including secondary historical materials, archival documents and collections, and ethno­graphic research, to suggest that Istanbul has experienced three food regimes, each with unique relationships between the central authority, economics, and food supplies.