Chiapas Maya Awakening

Mexico’s indigenous people speak a number of rich and complex languages today as they did before the arrival of the Spanish. Yet a common misperception is that Mayas have no languages of their own only dialectos and therefore live in silence. In reality contemporary Mayas are anything but voiceless. Chiapas Maya Awakening a collection of poems and short stories by indigenous authors from Chiapas Mexico is an inspiring testimony to their literary achievements. A unique trilingual edition it presents the contributors’ works in the living Chiapas Mayan languages of Tsotsil and Tseltal along with English and Spanish translations.. As Sean S. Sell Marceal Méndez and Inés Hernández-Ávila explain in their thoughtful introductory pieces the indigenous authors of this volume were born between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s a time of growing cultural awareness among the native communities of Chiapas. Although the authors received a formal education their language of instruction was Spanish and they had to pursue independent paths to learn to read and write in their native tongues. In the book’s first half devoted to poetry the writers consciously speak for their communities. Their verses evoke the quetzal the moon and the sea and reflect the identities of those who celebrate them. The short stories that follow address aspects of modern Maya life. In these stories mistrust and desperation yield violence among a people whose connection to the land is powerful but still precarious.. Chiapas Maya Awakening demonstrates that Mayas are neither a vanished ancient civilization nor a remote undeveloped people. Instead through their memorable poems and stories the indigenous writers of this volume claim a place of their own within the broader fields of national and global literature.