Interviewer: What is being performed?
Informant: A story by Amy Melendrez
Interviewer: What is the background information about the performance? Why do you know or like this piece? Where or who did you learn it from?
Informant: “La Llorona” a lady drowned herself and her children by driving her car into a lake. Now she walks crying out for her children trying to find them.
Interviewer: What country and what region of that country are you from?
Informant: Mexico, central.
Interviewer: Do you belong to a specific religious or social sub group that tells this story?
Informant: Family’s Catholic but story is not religious.
Interviewer: Where did you first hear the story?
Informant: Family
Interviewer: What do you think the origins of this story might be?
Informant: Folkloric, word of mouth
Interviewer: What does it mean to you?
Informant: It’s a bit of a joke- “If you don’t go to sleep, La Llorona will get you.” It’s more for children.
Context of the performance- conversation with a classmate
Thoughts about the piece- Although “The Weeping Woman” is a popular Hispanic ghost story, my informant seems to think it is contemporary (mentioning a car). For a more traditional telling of this old cautionary tale about an unfaithful husband and his vindictive wife, see here: http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html This story is thought to be from the 1500s but a 1986 San Antonio murder has eerie similarities: https://ghostcitytours.com/san-antonio/haunted-places/la-llorona/