La Llorona

La Llorona, "the weeping woman," is as well known to the descendants of the Spaniards in the Hispanic world as the "bogeyman" is to many Anglo cultures. In this book of nearly fifty stories told by people from the Southwestern U.S., the dozens of descriptions of La Llorona include a creature nine feet tall and floating across a creek, a ball of fire rolling in your direction, and a gnomish little person with warts on her nose. No matter what she looks like, she nearly always manages to terrorize her wayward victims into changing their ways. Judith S. Beatty is a 30-year resident of New Mexico who first heard La Llorona on the Santa Fe River in 1974. In addition to compiling and editing these stories, she authored a screenplay in 1992 that became the video, "La Llorona." She is a freelance and technical writer and is at work on a second book of La Llorona tales with co-editor Edward Garcia Kraul.