¿Saben de La Llorona? Spine-Chilling Tales as Translingual and Transnational Writing in a Family Storytelling Workshop

• In Event: Supporting Children and Families in Early Childhood Education Contexts Through Translingual Practices and Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose
Scary stories--what we refer to as spine-chilling tales--are passed down across languages, borders, and generations (Kovanen & Kotilainen, 2018). However, such tales are rarely welcomed in elementary schools, and are often positioned as “inappropriate” for children (Saldaña, 2018), despite their presence in children’s social worlds (Yoon, 2021). We documented how bilingual families composed and shared spine-chilling tales in an out-of-school storytelling workshop. We offer insights from this space to shed light on the ways that spine-chilling tales might be incorporated into elementary classroom settings, and to highlight the potential and tensions that might arise with such work.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on two perspectives: translingual and transnational writing. Translingual writing (Horner et al., 2011) highlights language diversity and empowers language users by honoring the ways “writers can work with and against, not simply within” (p. 305) the traditions of Dominant American English. Transnationalism draws attention to the ways that people cultivate and maintain connections across national borders (Lam & Warriner) through writing and other multimodal means of expression (Compton-Lilly et al, 2019; Jiménez et al., 2009). Together, translingual and transnational perspectives position writing as negotiated and dynamic, highlighting how composition can be used for expression and connection.

Context and Data Sources
In this qualitative case study, participants included mothers (n = 4) and their children (n = 13; ages 2-13 years) who participated in an intergenerational, community-based storytelling workshop. Data sources included audio-recorded workshop session transcripts (n=7), interview transcripts (n = 8), and artifacts produced during workshop sessions (n = 76). Analysis included cycles of descriptive, process, and in vivo coding (Saldaña, 2015). We constructed 62 codes (e.g., “stories passed down,” “testing boundaries”), which we collapsed into 18 categories (e.g., “collaborative storytelling,” “expressing transnationalism”). We connected our coding scheme to literature and theory to construct themes (Ravitch & Riggan, 2016). We engaged in analytic memoing, triangulated assertions, and sought disconfirming evidence (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Findings
We detail how mothers and children composed spine-chilling tales in ways that were inspired by cultural, historical, and contemporary influences, and how they used a range of linguistic and material resources to share their stories. Across our data, mothers composed stories from their childhoods in Mexico and El Salvador, creating new and evolving versions of their own. For example, Iris used Spanish writing and art to restory “La Llorona” (the weeping woman), creating a version of that acknowledged the story’s traditional themes of death and violence, but also offered a more hopeful alternative. Children drew on themes and characters from the horror genre in popular and digital media. For example, Jason, a five year old boy, told a story in English and Spanish involving Momo, a frightening character from an internet meme that had spread across the world through a messaging app.

Significance
We contribute to the extant literature by exploring translingual and transnational writing in one particular genre--spine-chilling tales. We explore the ways this genre facilitates cultural, transnational, and intergenerational learning, and grapple with tensions around its transgressions of norms of classroom appropriateness.

Authors

• Emily Machado, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Grace Cornell Gonzales, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Plitkins, University of Washington
  Presenting Author