Chiapas Maya Awakenings: Contemporary Poems and Short Stories ed. by Sean S. Sell and Nicolás Huet Bautista (review)

IN CHIAPAS MAYA AWAKENINGS, Sean Sell and Nicolás Huet Bautista present selected poetry and stories of Mayan writers of Chiapas, Mexico. The literature is the result of a writing seminar for young students to pen stories rooted in their knowledge and belief system and place them in conversation with universal literary practices (ix–x). Originally published in the writers' Indigenous languages and Spanish, the English translation shows the ongoing determination to make the work available beyond local borders. The illustrations intermittently placed throughout the book contribute to the narratives that reflect Mayan worldviews.

The introduction by Inés Hernández-Ávila frames the scope of the anthology. Her long trajectory working with Indigenous writers of Mexico manifests in the way she weaves together the history of the contemporary Indigenous writers' movement. Series of gatherings, conferences, and colloquiums that date back over forty years have pushed open and given shape to spaces for the expression of this literary movement that reveals "indigenous wisdom traditions" (8). The overall analysis that Hernández-Ávila provides on the literature emphasizes the main themes of the collected works. The introduction is fundamental to the context of the literature and understanding of the contemporary Indigenous literary movement of Mexico.

The pieces produced in the authors' Indigenous tongue and Spanish indicate the reality poets and writers navigate in their daily lives and the impact of these experiences in their creative processes. Most of the contributors learned how to read and write in Spanish first, as such writing in their Indigenous tongue requires translation skills and creativity. The English version by Sell is a contribution to this growing field of study. In the "Translators' Note," Sell highlights the art of translating when working with multiple languages and the dialoguing that develops to keep the essence of the poem and story alive. This is visible through the series of footnotes in some of the pieces as well as in the extensive explanation of some concepts in the glossary.

The book is divided in two sections: poems and stories. The literature demonstrates the "Maya awakening" that has been developing in Chiapas in the last decades as reflected in such poems as "O'on/Soy/I Am" by María Concepción Bautista Vázquez, "Ch'anetel II/Silencio II/Silence II" by Manuel Bolom Pale, and "Xch'ulel vitsetik/Espíritu de montañas/Spirit of Mountains" by Ruperta Bautista Vázquez. The poems burst open silences to affirm the Mayan presence in Chiapas. The Mayan cosmovision is further captured in the poetry of Adriana López, who centers the heart (o'tanil/corazón) in relation to all that surrounds and sustains people's sense of being. Angelina Díaz Ruiz's poems pay tribute to the water, honor the stillness of dawn, and revere the birth of light in the early hours of the morning. Andrés López Díaz's poem, "'Ojov,' an ode to a Maya deity, a spirit of the Chiapas highlands" (24), closes this section. The piece gives no translation of ojov in Spanish or English; instead, it engages with the multiple meanings of ojov throughout the poem.

The second section is comprised of three stories by Juan Julián Cruz Cruz, Miguel Ruiz Gómez, and Alberto Gómez Pérez on some realities of daily life. At the center of Cruz Cruz's story is a carnival celebration that ends with a fatality, disrupting forever the life of the young protagonist. Ruiz Gómez narrates the nightmare Mayan men experience as they embark on the arduous migration journey to the North. Gómez Pérez's story closes this section. The title, "I never knew anything," reads like a play of words, because in the story, the protagonist claims a constant lack of knowledge about the occurrences of the night he loses his friend. However, as the story unfolds, the protagonist...