The first prahara is spent in ploughing,
The second in harrowing.
Then you strike me with a stick—
Have you forgotten your Lord,
Oh dear farmer?
I owe you nothing at all,
I graze on the wild grass!…
Journal Articles
From the Director
In early 2023, New York Folklore put out a Call for guest editors for our journal. Each potential guest editor proposed a special issue with a specific theme or focus. Two talented folklorists are being featured for the 2023 issues of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore. This issue, by Sarah Shultz, has its focus on foodways.
From the Editor
I developed a research interest in foodways while doing my Master of Arts in Folk Studies & Anthropology at Western Kentucky University in 2015, but my cultural interest in food dates back much further, to when I was 18 years old and living in New York City for the first time as an undergraduate student. I remember that first semester vividly—the classes, meeting new friends, adapting to living in a city after having spent my entire life in a quiet college town. What I remember most of all are the tastes—meeting up with classmates for sushi during study breaks; sipping an egg cream for the first time at a diner at three o’clock in the morning; biting into a knish outside of Lincoln Center in the freezing February wind.
Korovainytsia from Seventh East Street
This study investigates the re-creation of the korovai baking tradition within the Ukrainian diaspora in New York, offering a detailed case study of how the cultural practice has been adapted and revitalized in a new environment. Although korovai, a traditional Ukrainian wedding bread, is deeply rooted in the culinary practices of Ukraine, its continuation in the diaspora reflects a dynamic process of cultural adaptation. The research explores the establishment and operation of korovai baking classes in The Ukrainian Museum in New York and the personal baking practices of Mrs. Larysa Zielyk, demonstrating how these efforts contribute to the ongoing re-creation and transmission of the tradition.
Grilled Cheese
There is no shortage of paeans to
New York diner culture. Sliding into
a slightly sticky faux leather booth, nursing
a hot cup of coffee, poring over an endless
menu. A good diner does not surprise
but rather delights you with the comfort of
familiarity. Diners dot the memories of my
Long Island upbringing,…
The Demand Calls for It:
In her poem “Exodus and Consumption,” Audrey Rodríguez traces a mango’s movement away from its Tapachulan soil. The fruit is “sun-kissed and watered” for five years, “thrown into a basket by tiny hands / Taken for a hot bath” before being sent to the US/Mexico border for agricultural inspection. “Kill the invasive Mexican fruit flies / The demand calls for it.”
Italian American Foodways in Pigtown
I was born and raised in Pigtown, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, that is located, roughly speaking, between Empire Blvd. to the North and Kings County Hospital to the South. It also spans Rogers to Schenectady Avenues….Some people tended small gardens, and some, like my neighbor across the street,
kept rabbits in their yard and occasionally grilled them. Others had pigeon coops, and there was an endless array of street peddlers selling all manner of things.
Resilience & Nostalgia:
Foodways are one of the most resilient forms of intergenerational cultural expression in diaspora communities, playing a central role in expressing group identity in historic ethnic communities across the United States—including Niagara Falls, New York. This resiliency is magnified in Rust Belt cities like Niagara Falls, which has been grappling with significant decline and population loss, following its industrial boom in the early-mid-20th century: a population loss that includes many members of its vibrant Armenian community.
Feeding the Ancestors:
Śrāddha is a Hindu calendrical ritual involving the offering of food to one’s ancestors. In this article, I trace the adaptation and diffusion of this ancient ritual in the context of diasporic and generational shifts. My paternal aunt, Shanta Nimbark-Sacharoff, described the migration from her small Indian village to New York, in the 1960s, where, together with her beloved elder brother, she discovered a newfound fascination with her family’s traditional foodways. Particularly, since her brother’s sudden passing, she has revived the annual observance of śrāddha, during which she always prepares “okra bhaji” to propitiate his soul.
Commentary:
In a 1935 letter to his fellow pulp fiction author and one-time collaborator E. Hoffman Price, Howard Phillips Lovecraft explained that he “always preferred to use established folklore legends as little as possible” and strove to “invent his own fantastic violations of natural law” (Lovecraft 1976). This statement might surprise both casual and longtime readers of Lovecraft and his genre breaking horror and science fiction.
Stories That Cook:
GLOW Traditions is excited to announce the upcoming release of Stories That Cook: Art, Memories, and Recipes, a bilingual English–Spanish cookbook centered on the foodways of our western New York agricultural communities… GLOW Traditions conducted fieldwork to collect recipes, stories, and other background from our artist instructors, farmers and families, farmworkers, and arts and service organizations involved with migrant communities.
From the Director
Our History. The New York Folklore Society was founded in 1944 by a group of folklorists, historians, writers, and enthusiasts—dreamers and visionaries emerging from the Great Depression. Sharing a vision for cultural democracy after World War II, they felt that it was essential to collect, save, and share the folk arts and cultural traditions of the many cultures that made up the urban and rural areas of the state, its historic regions, and the American literary traditions it inspired. The founders’ goal was to “plow back”: to give back traditional arts to the people who created and maintained them.
From the Editor
A Call to Action.
Just before the new
year, along with hundreds of arts nonprofits across
the state, the New York
Folklore Society received
alarming news. New
York State’s deficit reduction
plan instituted in December 2008 included
extensive cuts to a number of state programs—
including the grants budget of the
New York State Council on the Arts. The cuts
to NYSCA meant that pending requests for
fiscal year 2008–9 funding, including the New
York Folklore Society’s request for general operating
support, could not be considered.
Dynamic yet Fragile:
Archives, historical societies, and museums
today have inherited the task
of caring for a swelling mass of audiovisual
materials. A 2005 Heritage Health Index
survey calculated a staggering 2,423,568
moving image collections and 2,189,992
audio collections safeguarded within the
United States alone. Alarmingly, more than
40 percent of audio and video collections
are maintained in unknown conditions. The
same report concluded that many cultural
institutions lack essential resources to care
for these artifacts. These collections are
in peril if left unattended, as over time the
fragile plastic-coated tapes can deteriorate
and fail to play.
Still Going Strong
Karen Sell is a modern practitioner of
the age-old craft of wig making. A native
of Singapore, Karen studied hairstyling in
England, where she also took a course in wig
making. She worked as a stylist for the Vidal
Sassoon salons in London, then later in New
York when she immigrated to this country in
the late 1980s. In New York, she also worked
as a stylist at a salon that made wigs. There,
she styled and maintained wigs for clients,
then established her own wig-making business
about fifteen years ago.