Cultural Writing. Poetry. Essays. As a leading interpreter of border life and culture, Allicia Gaspar Alba, a lesbian chicana poet, storyteller, and essayist explores the borders and limits of place, body, and language through a painful series of moves and losses. In sections divided into each of the places she visited in her travels, Alba incorporates the Mexican archetypal wailing woman who wanders in search of her lost children. LA LLORONA proves to be more than an archetype: it is a tour guide through the constant presence of the poet's voice. Alicia Gapar de Alba is also the co- editor of AZTLAN: A JOURNAL OF CHICANO STUDIES and the author of the acclaimed novel Sor Juana's Second Dream (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), and The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories (Bilingual Review Press, 1993). She is a professor of Chicano/a Studies and English at the University of California Los Angeles.