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“Mr. Allan Burns, I am here to tell you an example, the example of the Hunchbacks.” So said Paulino Yamá, traditionalist and storyteller, to Allan Burns, anthropologist and linguist, as he began one story that found its way into this book.

Paulino Yamá was just one of several master storytellers from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico from whom Burns learned not only the Mayan language but also the style and performance of myths, stories, riddles, prayers, and other forms of speech of their people. The result is An Epoch of Miracles, a wonderfully readable yet thoroughly scholarly set of translations from the oral literature of the Yucatec Maya, an important New World tradition never before systematically described.

An Epoch of Miracles brings us over thirty-five long narratives of things large, small, strange, and “regular” and as many delightful short pieces, such as bird lore, riddles, and definitions of anteaters, rainbows, and other commonplaces of the Mayan world. Here are profound narratives of the Feathered Serpent, the mighty Rain God Chac and his helpers, and the mysterious cult of the Speaking Cross. But because these are modern, “Petroleum Age” Maya, here too are a discussion with Cuba’s Fidel Castro and a greeting to former president Richard Nixon.

All pieces are translated ethnopoetically; examples of several genres are presented bilingually.  An especially valuable feature is the indication of performance style, such as pauses and voice quality, given with each piece.

In Caste War Now and Never scholar S. B. West considers Yucatán’s nineteenth-century Caste War, the longest and most violent Indigenous uprising of the Western Hemisphere, to argue that it actually never occurred.

Instead, West writes that the violent events grouped under the “Caste War” label must be understood through alternative frameworks that resist the emergent logics of race war and include related regulatory matrices like gender and land. Through this lens, the Caste War emerges as a discursive construct rooted in an anti-Indigenous archive that served the political interests of a frustrated regional elite during the rise of liberalism and nationhood. West argues that Caste War discourse unfolds as a technology that mobilized and legitimized genocidal actions against racialized rebels and inspired assimilation into hegemonic political and social structures.

In the second half of the book, West looks at the Caste War to engage its contemporary polysemic nature through close readings of Yucatec Maya texts, stories, and other forms of knowledge production. These sources reframe the Caste War as an important part of a framework of resistance that defies colonial time and reclaims narrative control of its events.

Caste War Now and Never captures how Maya communities understand the conflict as ongoing and demonstrates that although the Caste War never occurred as such, it continues to endure presently.

As part of the larger, ongoing movement throughout Latin America to reclaim non-Hispanic cultural heritages and identities, indigenous writers in Mexico are reappropriating the written word in their ancestral tongues and in Spanish. As a result, the long-marginalized, innermost feelings, needs, and worldviews of Mexico's ten to twenty million indigenous peoples are now being widely revealed to the Western societies with which these peoples coexist. To contribute to this process and serve as a bridge of intercultural communication and understanding, this groundbreaking, three-volume anthology gathers works by the leading generation of writers in thirteen Mexican indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Maya, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tabasco Chontal, Purepecha, Sierra Zapoteco, Isthmus Zapoteco, Mazateco, Ñahñu, Totonaco, and Huichol.

Volume 1 contains narratives and essays by Mexican indigenous writers. Their texts appear first in their native language, followed by English and Spanish translations. Frischmann and Montemayor have abundantly annotated the English, Spanish, and indigenous-language texts and added glossaries and essays that trace the development of indigenous texts, literacy, and writing. These supporting materials make the anthology especially accessible and interesting for nonspecialist readers seeking a greater understanding of Mexico's indigenous peoples.

The other volumes of this work will be Volume 2: Poetry/Poesía and Volume 3: Theater/Teatro.

As part of the larger, ongoing movement throughout Latin America to reclaim non-Hispanic cultural heritages and identities, indigenous writers in Mexico are reappropriating the written word in their ancestral tongues and in Spanish. As a result, the long-marginalized, innermost feelings, needs, and worldviews of Mexico's ten to twenty million indigenous peoples are now being widely revealed to the Western societies with which these peoples coexist. To contribute to this process and serve as a bridge of intercultural communication and understanding, this groundbreaking, three-volume anthology gathers works by the leading generation of writers in thirteen Mexican indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Maya, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tabasco Chontal, Purepecha, Sierra Zapoteco, Isthmus Zapoteco, Mazateco, Ñahñu, Totonaco, and Huichol.

Volume Two contains poetry by Mexican indigenous writers. Their poems appear first in their native language, followed by English and Spanish translations. Montemayor and Frischmann have abundantly annotated the Spanish, English, and indigenous-language texts and added glossaries and essays that discuss the formal and linguistic qualities of the poems, as well as their place within contemporary poetry. These supporting materials make the anthology especially accessible and interesting for nonspecialist readers seeking a greater understanding of Mexico's indigenous peoples.