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There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture. By Domino Renee Perez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Pp. xix+272, author's preface, art work, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.)
For over 500 years the figure of La Llorona - Wailing Woman or Weeping Woman - has captivated the imagination of children and adults alike in Mexico and in the U.S. wherever Mexican Americans reside. She has followed me, alongside other figures of Mexican folklore, from my childhood along the Rio Grande in South Texas to my stint in graduate school in Nebraska along the Platte River and wherever I have lived near a body of water. This figure, which has in some sense crossed over into the imaginary of the U.S. mainstream culture, continues to have a hold on the imaginary of many of us who have, as Perez notes, heard the familiar "There was a woman..." that prefaces the telling of the tale. It has remained "an important part of Mexican storytelling traditions on both sides of the US/Mexico border." Gloria Anzaldúa notes that La Llorona, along with La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe, comprise a trinity of female figures that she calls "las 1res madres" (the three mothers) who "are cultural figures that Chicana writers and artists 'reread' in our works" (1998:164). As pervasive and as complex as the figure of La Llorona is, and with as many treatments of her figure in academic and popular works, no one has attempted what Domino Renee Perez attempts in this...