Professor Fernado Orejuela
Folklore F101
13 June 2015
Mini-Ethnography 2: Interpreting Folklore
1) Section One: Biographical Sketch
In my mini-ethnography project, I interviewed two informants from two different South East Asian countries. Htaik Khamom is a 20-year-old college student and she looks like any typical Asian woman. She is very skinny, tall, and has light color skin. She currently lives in Bloomington. She came to United States a couple of years back and still misses living in Burma. She was raised by her grandmother and learned everything from her grandmother. She currently live with her parents and her younger sister. My second informant is Brandon Burzon who is a 21-year-old IU student and he currently lives …show more content…
Even though the characters do not know each other, they are willing to help out in any way they can, even if it means sacrificing themselves. This tells us that the informant may enjoy the story because she believes everyone should be like the characters in her story: considerate and selfless. She may have high expectations of others since she believes this story and the moral of it. Also the story represents the belief that god is always testing us and that only the worthy can reach the highest spiritual position possible. So this informant would consider being selfless and helping others as good and something everyone should do as well. She learned this from her family especially her grandmother and everyone around her can judge which actions really are selfless and helpful. It is important whom she learned this folklore from because this means what her family thinks and believes defines who she is. She is most likely to teach this story to others and pass it onto her children. She may believe this story is a good way to teach others what she learned from her family. As a member of a community, if she is considerate and selfless as the rabbit in the story, she is considered having good moral and religious. She is most likely to keep her values and morals in mind when interacting with others and judge others depending on the values and morals they have. Folklore is part of a shared sense of community in the way that it determines how people in the community behave on their own and with others. By evaluating folklore like the Rabbit on the Moon, one can determine the values of this community every