A History of American Literature

Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 141

individual significance of these three female icons varies, of course, and they are

clearly distinct from one another. One contemporary Mexican-American writer,

Gloria Anzaldua, for instance, refers to them, respectively, as “the virgin mother who

has abandoned us,” “the raped mother whom we have abandoned,” and “the mother

who seeks her lost children and is a combination of the other two.” But all three

function as originators and mediators, their stories furnishing a vital element in the

Mexican-American myth of origins and history. And all three have become captivating

cultural icons, not least in contemporary Chicano literature.

What is especially powerful about these tales from the Hispanic Southwest is what

tends to mark out all folktales transmitted via an oral tradition: poetic repetition,

narrative spontaneity and fluency, a startling generic mix, and the sense that this tale

and tale teller form part of a continuity, a vital chain of narrative and human

connection. In a story called “La Llorona, Malinche, and the Unfaithful Maria,” for

instance, the audience is quickly told the story of three women who killed their

children. The first, La Llorona, died; her ring was taken from her dead hand and then

passed on to a girl who “later became known as Malinche.” After drowning all three of

her children, she also died, although “even after she had died, she would cry out,

‘Ohhhhh, my children, where are they?’ ” And the ring was then taken from her finger

by a woman “later known as Unfaithful Maria.” Obeying the instructions of an evil

spirit, she killed her three children too. But her fate, we are told, was rather different

from that of her predecessors. “Her head turned into that of a horse”; and, in addition,

“one of her feet was that of a horse, and one was that of a chicken.” After this sudden

move into the grotesque, the tale is brought into the present. “This started back in

1800,” we learn, “and is still going on today in Mexico.” “My grandparents told me this

story. Then my stepfather,” the anonymous narrator explains. “Then my grandmother,

my father’s mother, told me this story of La Llorona who was the first. My mother told

me the second story of Malinche. My stepfather told me about the third.” Not only

that, we are assured, the stepfather had actually seen Unfaithful Maria. One story

shades into another here, so much so that, by the end, Unfaithful Maria is actually

referred to as “La Llorona.” And one storytelling shades into another as well, as earlier

versions, earlier moments of tale telling are invoked. This insistent rhythm of repetition,

accumulation, is accompanied by a narrative approach that constantly surprises: for all

that one episode melts into the next, via the device of the ring, we never quite know

where the story will go next or what the exact tone will be. Magic and melodrama, the

sentimental and the gothic, morality and bizarre humor are mixed together to create a

mood of enchantment. And, while the audience is reminded of many other occasions

of storytelling, and other storytellers, they are intimately involved with this particular

one. This, in short and in every respect, is a tale of community.

African-American polemic and poetry

The community that aroused most debate in the first half of the nineteenth century

was neither the Native American nor the Mexican-American one, but the African-

American community of slaves. And crucial to that debate were not only the slave

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