ABSTRACT
Lucia Soc told the author that there had once been a frog in her stomach. She also told the author of a black dog with flames shooting out of its eyes. She dreamed of this dog, and the next day it came to her as she walked through the woods near her home. In this chapter the author presents a part of the transcription generated during life history interviews with this Mayan woman. Approximately six hours of interview were taped. Lucia is a forty-one-year-old Guatemalan woman of Mayan descent, born to a Mam mother and Cakchiquel father. She describes her childhood as being a series of hardships, one after another, in which she portrays herself as an outcast, la bastarda. Presently Lucia lives in a small city in the Southwest. She married an American she met in her twenties while he was working in Guatemala City.
