Today I hosted one of the best workshops to date at the library. Anne Sawyer is a local puppeteer, and did an amazing job introducing young children to the wonder and beauty of shadow puppets. I was absolutely blown away. While she was setting up, she told me about a four-week shadow puppet project she did with Latino teens using the story of La Llorona.
La Llorona, Spanish for Weeping Woman, is a legend in Mexican folklore. She is the ghost of a woman whose two young children drowned...by her own doing, according to Wikipedia. Sometimes she can be benign ("La Llorona came to me and told me not to drink"), but more often she can be absolutely wicked and vindictive. Also, there is some speculation that La Llorona is La Malinche (the Aztec mistress of Cortés). But however her story is handed down (usually as a cautionary tale of some sort) everybody in Mexico knows who she is.
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