La Llorona's ghostly figure has haunted the pages of Chicanx literature for years as the monstrous woman. While her story shifts forms depending on the cultural context, the essentials remain: she was a woman, wronged by the father of her children, who now wanders the rivers at night wailing for the two children she drowned in anger, grief, or desperation. She has often been considered a monstrous figure whose function has been to regulate female identity. However, authors like Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros have sought to reclaim this ghostly visage from the grasp of patriarchal structures that condemn la Llorona's actions. Anzaldúa's poem "My Black Angelos" and Sandra Cisneros' short story "Woman Hollering Creek" revise la Llorona to acknowledge the female agency she represents. While critics have focused on feminine agency in these works, the function of the monstrous has been overlooked. The monstrous usually refers to something feared or uncanny with women and people of color's bodies representing cultural fears, but in these cases the monstrous is reimagined as a tool for agency. Through the lens of monster theory, and drawing on the theories of Jeffrey Cohen, Cristina Santos, and Luce Irigaray, this paper argues that Anzaldua's and Cisneros' representations of la Llorona develop feminine agency and community just as other critics have mentioned, but they also complicate monster theory by resituating the subjectivity to account for the postive monster of la Llorona. Through this, monster theory's dependence on a self/other dichotomy falls away and, with it, la Llorona's position as only a monster to be feared. Instead, these representations of la Llorona invite Chicanx women into the community of the monstrous, where Cisneros and Anzaldúa transform it from an androcentric space of "othering" and oppression to one of belonging and power. 

“Native Homes: Xavier’s path from Sápmi to Tacoma” is a work of creative nonfiction grounded in scholarly and archival research about the first theologian at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). Johan Ulrik Xavier was an Indigenous Sámi man from Northern Norway (Sápmi). The Sámi people have always been semi-nomads moving with their reindeer. When Xavier’s family came to the United States in 1873, they left their traditional lifeway behind. Almost 150 years later, I left my Sámi community in Tromso for an education in the U.S. and found myself attending PLU. I stumbled upon the name Xavier on a campus building and I was told he was Sámi. “Native Homes” implements research on the significance of place and why people move, especially through an Indigenous perspective. While trying to understand who Xavier was and why his family moved, I found out that I am distantly related to Xavier. After feeling guilty for leaving my community, I was absolutely stunned by the fact that someone related to me had done the same 150 years earlier and ended up in the same place. This gave me a new connection to this land. “Native Homes” combines my archival research findings with my personal exploration of the definition of home. A Sámi writer named Nils Aslak Valkeapää once wrote: “My home is in my heart; it migrates with me.” I wondered if it was possible that Xavier and I had managed to bring our Native homes this far from our Native lands. Through my essay, I strive to answer the questions: Is it possible for Native individuals to leave their Native land and still have strong ties to their culture? Is it possible to have multiple homes?