La Llorona Legend Case Study

Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” deals heavily with the concept of myth in literature, more specifically the myth La Malinche, which focuses on women, and how their lives are spun in the shadows on men (Fitts). Myths help power some of the beliefs of entire cultures or civilizations. She gives the reader the mind of a Mexican-American woman who seems traitorous to her friends, family and people she is close to. This causes destruction in her path in the form of love, power, heartbreak, hatred, and an intent to do harm to another, which are themes of myth in literature. The unreliable narrator of this story was created in this story with the purpose to show her confusion and what coming from two completely different

The story of La Llorona originates from Durango, Mexico. The story speaks about a very beautiful woman named Maria. Maria was a lower class citizen who fell in love with a higher class gentleman, and because of her looks and charm he also fell in love with her. The two would spend so much time together, they were like a married couple. He eventually asked for her hand in marriage and Maria felt like the happiest

She'd lived too long to be talked to like a young girl. Nobody told her what to do or how to live anymore, not a daughter who lived more than three hundred miles away and not some cabrón who left banana peels on her floor” (Casares 2). It Shows Mrs. Perez not anting being control, after her husband has been controlling her life was enough of it. She want to decide for her own self and live the life how she want

La Llorona is to Mexican and Chicano children, what the Bogeyman is to American kids. La Llorona is almost like a mythical monster made to scare kids into good behavior. The story is about a women who drowns her children after she is betrayed by her husband. Later, her spirit returns and roams the streets while she weeps, in search of her kids. I am sure that stories of La Llorona are almost like a household name in every Mexican home. I remember when i was a little kid, my summer days, were spent playing outside until the sunset. I’d rush home before the sun went down, because if got too dark then I’d fear that La Llorona would be lurking somewhere in the back alleys. But why is La Llorona lurking in Denver’s back alleys? Well, even though

The legend, La Llorona or the weeping woman is one of the best known classic Hispanic tales. Many versions of La Llorona are told universally, but has origin roots from Mexico. This folklore typically involves a restless, ghostly entity as a beautiful lady dressed in white who wanders at night and is seen or heard wailing for her dead children. Because of a heartbreak la Llorona killed her own children. It is said that her soul now wanders sadly calling her children appearing mysteriously in different areas especially along rivers, oceans or other bodies of water. Many believe myths or legends are only for entertainment, but some can have an underlying message.

In the short story, “Woman Hollering Creek,” written by Sandra Cisneros was about a woman named Cleofilas who married a man, Juan Pedro Martinez Sanchez, who abused her both mentally and physically. In the Mexican culture there always seems to be a difference between men and women. Men are superior to women. Women, just like Cleofilas in this story,believe it is their absolute duty to go through hell in order to attempt to make a marriage work. Also, not only did Cleofilas base her opinions about all the things she must endure in her marriage off of her culture, but of the telenovelas she was a fan of. Both her culture and love for telenovelas made her come up with the conclusion that for love one must be willing to suffer. And so her story began on how she gave up her life, her freedom for a man whom she taught was the love of her life.

The legend of La Llorona has been embedded into the Mexican and Chicano/a culture for more than five hundred years, primarily bringing fear, caution, and death to young children. Said to be dresses in all white with long black hair, La Llorona revolves on bringing fear to kids and emphazises the mourne of the loss of her children. Many of the kids who are told this story serves as a threat to not go play by a river or to stay out when the sun has fallen. Reverting back to the time period of the Spanish Conquista when Hernan Cortez was battling for settlement, La Malinche, (also referred to as Doña Marina, Milinalli, or Malintzin) a Nahua woman, was brought to him as a slave amongst twenty others like her. Having caught his attention, Cortez entitled La Malinche to be his translator, advisor, and mistress.

Ana Castillo’s novel, So Far From God, propels the reader on a vibrant and surreal journey through the tragic ordeals of Sofi and her four daughters. The first chapter, which offers certain similarities to the Bible’s story of Jesus Christ, in that Sofi’s three year old daughter, La Loca, seems to succumb to a violent and horrifying death, and at the wake, she returns to life with a tale of her journey beyond the veil. This scene creates a notable comparison between the patriarchal religiosity of the story of Jesus Christ and the Chicana-centered resurrection, complete with the hypocrisy of a male-centered system of beliefs, the acts of acquiring selfhood as a female centered savior, and the phenomena of the “death” of the saviors.

In this case for our group project, we were informed to relate the story of La Llorona and how does the book So Far From God, author Ana Castillo, relate to each other. In addition, there is a specific character that reminds us who is related to La Llorona. For the people who does not know the story of La Llorona, she had two children and lived a happy life with a dashing husband. However, she starts to realize that her beauty is not being looked upon from her husband. Since knowing she does not get the attention like she use to before, her anger has lead her to throw her two children in a river. Realizing her mistake, she tries to find her childrens. With no sign of them being found, she is found dead at the river. Due to this horrible ending,

“A ghostly woman wanders along canals and rivers, crying for her missing children, called La Llorona, ‘the Weeping Woman.’”

La Loca’s existence is crucial for two major reasons. First, her resurrection in the first chapter declares the nature of the story and hints of its magical narrative. Castillo wastes no time to inform her readers that So Far From God is a work of magical realism. Second, La Loca exists to encourage Sofi to rebel against the religious institution and the political establishment. As the narrator reports, “Loca had never left home and her mother was the sole person whom she ever let get near her” (221). This is a hint that La Loca’s relationship with Sofi goes beyond a mother-daughter relationship. It is a cause-and-effect relationship, since Sofi’s rebellion is staged on three different phases—each phase begins with La Loca (the cause) and ends with Sofi (the effect).

Many feminists today express their feeling in that La Malinche (Dona Maria) is the reason why Mexican men disrespect Mexican women, this expressed in Mexico’s high domestic violence and infidelity rates. Her brutality was demonstrated in various ways and carries on today. For one, she was far more than a ventriloquist for Cortes, her she inflected his emotions with either friendship or anger. She led

In this reading the author talks about the Latina experience in the US and the cultural differences. She said that her religion and culture created vagueness about her womanhood. Womanhood was a subject not spoken about often, making it difficult for her to get out of her comfort zone, seek guidance, and in some cases talk about it. After the event with her classmate she understood why they are many pregnant teens. Their own culture and religion had made the subject of womanhood a taboo, by not letting them know the reality of love and the different ways to protect themselves during sex. This had also caused them to be ashamed and scared to talk about the subject.

The story describes the experiences of a young women named Cleofilas. She grew up with six brothers and had no mother. So therefore, she learned how to be a woman through watching telenovelas. She believes that to be a woman she only needs to find true love and have a “happily ever after”. Later she meets a man named Juan and they eventually fall in love and get married.

As a woman, Angela Vicario is the epitome of a traditional Colombian woman. A traditional Colombian woman is expected to be virgins when they get married; but Vicario defys this social custom causing Vicario to get “softly pushed his wife into [her house] without speaking,” (46). These details emphasize the idea that women are given different standards than men. The details help highlight Marquez’s criticism of how the traditional Colombian woman is treated as and thought of as. From a very young age Vicario and her sisters were taught “how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write engagement announcements,” (31). These skills were taught to better prepare the girls for marriage; displaying the difference in gender roles. Marquez uses parallel structure to emphasize the amount of skills one has to learn before they can be considered as good and pure. Many years after Bayardo San Román returns Vicario she still does “machine embroidery with her friends just as before she had made cloth tulips and paper birds, but when her mother went to bed she would stay in her room until dawn writing letters with no future,” (93). The diction of the words “no future” and “still” suggest that Vicario’s life is stuck in