As printed April 15, 2004
by Libby Kelly
Daily Lobo
Cautionary tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" and the popular folktale of La Llorana have haunted the borders of childhood nightmares since anyone can remember.
Kathleen Alcal†, author and a visiting lecturer at UNM, uses oral tales in her works of fiction and nonfiction.
"Somebody came up to me one day and handed me a book," Alcal† said. "They said there was this essay I had to read. 'It's about your hometown,' they said. 'I thought you had been lying about it!'"
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The essay, by Joan Didion, was about a particularly lurid murder trial taking place in her hometown.
"It made a big impression on me - the difference in the veracity of an event between talking about a place and telling someone about it and reading about it in a book," she said.
Alcal† said she was always interested in writing, but didn't get serious about it until she was in her 20s. She went to Seattle and enrolled in some creative writing classes at the University of Washington.
"I decided to see if this was just a hobby or something I could actually do seriously," Alcal† said.
Her writing focuses mainly on the storytelling of her family.
"I write about the kinds of stories my family told," Alcal† said. "What is our place in the world? What are the ways that people solve problems of day-to-day life? I'm very interested in history through family stories."
Her love of writing has also given her an important tool in teaching. She uses local folklore that everyone has their own version of and asks them to write down that version.
"It's a really successful way of turning an oral tradition into a writing tradition," Alcal† said. "It's really hard for some of these kids to get up there and tell a story when they think they don't have anything original to say. But when they have their own take on these stories, these pieces of collective memory, it becomes much easier for them."
As a lecturer this spring at UNM, Alcal† is attempting to achieve the same thing with her college students and her high school students.
"I want them to know they have the power to tell original stories and be their own best editors," Alcal† said. "I want to give them the tools with which to tell stories and see them run with it. The work they give back is extraordinary."
One of Alcal†'s pieces, "The Woman Who Loved Water" retells the trial of Andrea Yates who drowned her five children in Texas. Alcal† combines myth and fact by weaving the well-known legend of La Llorana into the tale.
"I'm presenting a counter-narrative to official histories - stories that people tell each other about each other," Alcal† said. "It's the individual stories that really tell us who we are as human beings."
