This collection of folklore offers a rich and lively panorama of Mayan mythic heritage. Here are everyday tales of village life; legends of witches, shamans, spiritualists, tricksters, and devils; fables of naguales, or persons who can change into animal forms; ribald stories of love and life; cautionary tales of strange and menacing neighbors and of the danger lurking within the human heart. These legends narrate origin and creation stories, explain the natural world, and reinforce cultural beliefs and values such as honesty, industriousness, sharing, fairness, and cleverness. Whether tragic or comic, fantastic or earthy, whimsical or profound, these tales capture the mystery, fragility, and power of the Mayan world.
The god Kukulkan decides to give the Mayan people the gift of chocolate, the favorite food of the gods, but when Kukulkan 's brother Night Jaguar tells the other gods what he has done Kukulkan is banned from paradise forever.
The forty-two stories presented in this book were told to Robert Laughlin in Tzotzil by Francisca Hernández Hernández, an elderly woman known as Doña Pancha, the only speaker of Tzotzil left in the village of San Felipe Ecatepec in Chiapas, Mexico. Laughlin and Doña Pancha’s running conversation is the source for the stories, which means they are told in much the same way that stories are told in traditional native settings. Doña Pancha is bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish, and the stories are presented here in English, Tzotzil, and Spanish. They range from mythological sacred stories to quasi-historical legends to historical accounts of life in the twentieth century.
"Fascinated by the history and cultures of three highly developed ancient societies--the Mayans, followed by the Aztecs in Mesoamerica and the Incas farther south--Ferguson examines their artifacts and those of the Spanish conquistadors, in relation to the traditions preserved today by their many descendants...Part anthropological study, part history and part folklore... distills a huge amount of information to present a clear, uncluttered and rich resource."--"Publishers Weekly." "Fun, inspiring, educational, and all in all, a great read."--"The New Times."
These Mayan fables and animal stories were collected and transcribed by the author from Jakaltek-Maya language, one of the 21 Mayan languages that are still spoken in Guatemala. The stories are firmly rooted in the world of nature, demonstrating and insisting on honesty, understanding and respect among people and their cultures.
The Mayan people were natural storytellers, and their imagination knew no bounds. They took the traditional Mesoamerican versions of creation and the gods of the universe and molded them into their own, adding and shaping their unique version of mythology and folktales. This left us with a significant pantheon of gods and goddesses, each with a memorable and captivating story. The Mayans had an image of the universe and their place in it, and they told stories of gods and heroes that rival Greek Mythology.
In the delightful Mayan folktale The Dog Who Spoke, we learn what happens when a dog’s master magically transforms into a dog-man who reasons like a man but acts like a dog. This and the other Mayan folktales in this bilingual collection brim with the enchanting creativity of rural Guatemala’s oral culture. In addition to stories about ghosts and humans turning into animals, the volume also offers humorous yarns. Hailing from the Lake Atitlán region in the Guatemalan highlands, these tales reflect the dynamics of, and conflicts between, Guatemala’s Indian, Ladino, and white cultures. The animals, humans, and supernatural forces that figure in these stories represent Mayan cultural values, social mores, and history. James D. Sexton and Fredy Rodríguez-Mejía allow the thirty-three stories to speak for themselves—first in the original Spanish and then in English translations that maintain the meaning and rural inflection of the originals. Available in print for the first time, with a glossary of Indian and Spanish terms, these Guatemalan folktales represent generations of transmitted oral culture that is fast disappearing and deserves a wider audience.
When Cortes and his battle-weary Spanish soldiers first gazed on the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in 1519, they viewed the amazing culmination of 3,000 years of continuous cultural development. Aztec and Maya cities, temples, and palaces were in some ways like those found in Mesopotamia and Egypt: civilizations that had developed in isolation, free of outside influences. Here are the legends and stories of these two unique, ancient cultures.
An inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis. The archetypal creation story of Latin America, the Popol Vuh began as a Maya oral tradition millennia ago. In the mid-sixteenth century, as indigenous cultures across the continent were being threatened with destruction by European conquest and Christianity, it was written down in verse by members of the K’iche’ nobility in what is today Guatemala. In 1701, that text was translated into Spanish by a Dominican friar and ethnographer before vanishing mysteriously. Cosmic in scope and yet intimately human, the Popol Vuh offers invaluable insight into the Maya way of life before being decimated by colonization—their code of ethics, their views on death and the afterlife, and their devotion to passion, courage, and the natural world. It tells the story of how the world was created in a series of rehearsals that included wooden dummies, demi-gods, and eventually humans. It describes the underworld, Xibalba—a place as harrowing as Dante’s hell—and relates the legend of the ultimate king, who, in the face of tragedy, became a spirit that accompanies his people in their struggle for survival. Popol Vuh: A Retelling is a one-of-a-kind prose rendition of this sacred text that is as seminal as the Bible and the Qur’an, the Ramayana and the Odyssey. Award-winning scholar of Latin American literature Ilan Stavans brings a fresh creative energy to the Popol Vuh, giving a new generation of readers the opportunity to connect with this timeless story and with the plight of the indigenous people of the Americas. Praise for Popol Vuh: A Retelling: “Salvadoran illustrator Larios provides lush images to accompany stories of the Earth and the underworld, Xibalba, and the animals and gods that inhabit them…. A beautiful interpretation of pivotal Central American history told through contemporary illustration and language.” —Kirkus Reviews “In these pages you will find an adroit retelling of a complex and often confusing tale with a vast and bewildering cast of characters. Approaching the Popol Vuh with a fresh eye and the necessary erudition, Ilan Stavans, the distinguished scholar of Hispanic culture, nimbly conveys the content and the sense of the original, retaining its magic and fascination, while rendering it more accessible to a wider readership. Popol Vuh: A Retelling artfully presents the case for the centrality of this magisterial story to the cultural consciousness of the Americas and for the urgency of its message.” —Homero Aridjis, from the foreword "At a time when so many of us ask ourselves about the end of the world as we know it, few books could be more relevant than this sacred text of the Maya. In a mesmerizing, illuminating new translation, Ilan Stavans brings to contemporary readers this lyrical epic, with its messages from a lost civilization obsessed, as ours should be, with the inevitable cycles of catastrophe and change. The Popol Vuh encourages us to contemplate the perpetual conflict between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, so that we may find the wisdom to emerge as better people." —Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden "Popol Vuh is one of the seminal foundational 'texts' of the Americas before it became 'America'—and one so few of us really know much about. Again, Ilan Stavans is infusing the US of A with the cultures and stories that have been traditionally erased or ignored and forgotten. All I can say is, another amazing Stavans project!" —Julia Alvarez "The Popol Vuh is the great book of creation of the Maya K'iche' culture, and Ilan Stavans has embarked on an intrepid adventure of recreation; he returns to a myth of origin to endow it with vibrant topicality, proving that rewriting a legend is a way of bewitching time." —Juan Villoro, author of God Is Round “Many translators, scholars, and poets have brought us close to the radiant eminence of our Mayan origin story, the Popol Vuh. None touch its wondrous dynamism and epic elegance like Stavans and Larios. Free of the formal constraints of the K’iche’ original, Stavans’s delivers a masterful retelling that invites us into chimeric dreams: from the mischievous first peoples and the quests of those grown from seeds, to hybrid creatures and demi-god twins with battles lost and won. Larios’s dexterous admixture of cool washes and vibrant color palettes along with a K’iche’-inspired line-work aesthetic, further unzip our minds to a shared ancestral imaginary. Only my Guatemalan abuelita could cast such storytelling spells over me. Together, Stavans and Larios invite us all to dance as the children we once were and will become. A gift!” —Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Long Stories Cut Short: Fiction from the Borderlands “Ilan Stavans's retelling of this ancient and sacred story of the Mayan people is as exquisitely written as it is necessary.” —Eduardo Halfon, author of Mourning Praise for Ilan Stavans: “Ilan Stavans is an inventive interpreter of the contemporary cultures of the Americas…. Cantankerous and clever, sprightly and serious, Stavans is a voracious thinker. In his writing, life serves to illuminate literature—and vice versa: he is unafraid to court controversy, unsettle opinions, make enemies. In short, Stavans is an old-fashioned intellectual, a brilliant interpreter of his triple heritage—Jewish, Mexican, and American.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “…in the void created by the death of his compatriot Octavio Paz, Ilan Stavans has emerged as Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast.” —The Washington Post “Ilan Stavans has done as much as anyone alive to bridge the hemisphere’s linguistic gaps.” —The Miami Herald “A canon-maker.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education “Ilan Stavans is a maverick intellectual whose canonical work has already produced a whole array of marvels... His incisive essays are redefining Jewish literature.” —The Forward “Ilan Stavans is the rarest of North American writers—he sees the Americas whole. Not since Octavio Paz has Mexico given us an intellectual so able to violate borders, with learning and grace.” —Richard Rodriguez “In the multicultural rainbow that is contemporary America, no one may be more representative of the state of the union than Ilan Stavans.” —Newsday “Ilan Stavans may very well succeed in becoming the Octavio Paz of our age.” —The San Francisco Chronicle “A virtuoso critic with an exuberant, encyclopedic, restless mind.” —The Forward “Ilan Stavans has the sharp eye of the internal exile. Writing about the sometimes reluctant reconquista of North America by Spanish-speaking cultures or the development of his own identity, he deals with both the life of the mind and the life of the streets.” —John Sayles “Lively and intelligent, eclectic, sharp-tongued.” —Peter Matthiessen “I think Stavans has one of the best grips around on what makes Spanish America tick.” —Gregory Rabassa “Ilan Stavans is a disciple of Kafka and Borges. He accepts social identity broadly, in the most cosmopolitan terms… His impulse is to broaden, not to narrow; he finds understanding through complication of identity, not through the easy gestures of ethnic politics.” —The New York Times “Ilan Stavans has established himself as an invaluable commentator of literature.” —Phillip Lopate
