Post 9: La Llorona

Growing up, I heard many stories. Being half Mexican and half Puerto Rican, I heard many stories of each culture. However, the story that stood out the most was the story of "La Llorona". The story of a woman who killed her children thanks to the fact her husband left her all alone was often told. For other families, this is what was told in order to scare their children from going out alone at night. However, for our family it was just a way of bringing everyone together.

Since the family would always be busy, telling scary or thought provoking stories was what kept us entertained. We would come together and just talk about these stories, and just have a good time. Thanks to stories such as " La Llorona" really brought out family together and had us just wanting to hear more and more. Those stories weren't just to teach lessons, they were ways to bring the family together as one and experience a healthy and fun way to come together.

People may think that telling scary stories is not a way to spend family time because it's just meant to scare and not bring family together, but I completely disagree. Of course these stories bring people together. These stories have been passed down for a reason. People listen and they then share what they have heard or learned. It then becomes a tradition and a regular thing after it's done so many times. Families can have their stronger bonds thanks to stories, because they can have their own family tradition story, and for us, it's "La Llorona".

Post 8: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston & “The Female Individual and the Empire” by Feng Lan

I thought that the view of women is interesting in the tales. I remember loving Mulan as a child and always loving the fact that she wasn’t about being saved by Prince Charming. If anything, she saved “Prince Charming”. I feel that more woman figures such as Mulan should be shown to younger girls to show that they don’t need a man to be powerful or make a change. Everyone is capable of doing something big for big amounts of people, but it’s up to every individual to seize the opportunity and work with it. If you just sit there you won’t get anywhere by just staying there and doing nothing meaningful. Whether you are a boy or girl, man or woman, or even cat or dog, your gender or identify doesn’t define what you can do.

The girl in “The Woman Warrior” wanted to fight for the boys starting at 14, and she did everything she could to one day be able to fight for what she thought was right. The best thing was that people didn’t just knock her down because of her gender, just that she was too young. However, I also think knocking down younger children shouldn’t always be done, because sometimes youth has important ideas as well. However, if we know it’s something that could potentially be dangerous, definitely try to hold them back. But if it is something that is just about opinion, it is important to hear those opinions because they are living in this planet too, and they are growing up in this new generation, so they may know things that happen that you may not know.