Guatemala—the land of eternal Spring—the birthplace of my parents, their parents, their grandparents, and as far back as we can remember, the place I consider my second home. Guatemala, a country ravaged by civil war, the Spanish colonial regime, and the United Fruit Company; a place Anthony Bourdain was too scared to visit for fear of gang violence, drugs, and kidnappings. A place I visit every few years, where I have been stopped and frisked by military personnel and crooked police, threatened with machetes, and survived the shooting-up of my childhood home. It’s also the place I learned to ride a horse with no saddle, swim in lakes so clear that I could see my feet, and drink with locals who had to be up for work in a few hours. It’s a place blessed with beauty and plagued by history.
I was an infant—less than a year old—during my first visit to Guatemala. I don’t remember this. I was three, seven, ten, and twelve when we went again, and my memories all blend together into two distinct but cohesive montages of images. The first, in the mountainous highlands—sleeping on hammocks, trekking the jungle with my grandfather while holding a machete, carrying water up from the lake to boil and drink or heat for showers, and walking down the mountain to the mill to grind corn for tortillas. The capital holds different mental pictures and associations—men in uniform with automatic weapons, my cousin standing on the corner with his friends selling drugs, the open-air markets, the gang signs spray-painted on neighborhood walls.
My book, Guatemalan Rhapsody, explores the dichotomies of my upbringing—both the beauty and the danger—and shows what it means to have both of these things living inside of you. My characters present tough exteriors to conceal the pain and trauma dwelling within. These are a people who have been through much, both in their recent and ancestral histories, and tell the stories of country and its inhabitants. These are the fictionalized stories of my uncles, cousins, brothers, parents, friends, and strangers I knew or saw while I was growing up, all of which have been informed by the authors I have named here. From the humor I employ to the loss of our indigenous roots to the difficult circumstances my characters find themselves in, these topics converse with the other authors on this list. I think this is our way of presenting, center stage, a body that casts a shadow—a people too real to not stop the light that illuminates one half of our beings and obscures the other.
Trout, Belly Up by Rodrigo Fuentes, translated by Ellen Jones
This collection of interlinked short stories brings to light the life of Don Henrik—a rural farmer on a quest to better his circumstances in life—and the lives of others in the surrounding areas in similar situations. Fuentes’ characters are overflowing with vices and virtues and feel more real than some of the people—made of flesh and blood—that I encounter on the street in real life. From a missing dog to hitmen to trout breeders, the stories in this collection end with an open-endedness that left me frantically turning pages and stopping just short of attempting to slice open the thin paper on which the words were printed to see if there was more.
Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva
This is a novel told in verse, where “Las Chismosas”—the gossipers, a chorus of aunts and grandmothers—follow the narrator, Melissa, as she goes about her daily life dealing with breakups, periods, bad sex, and, of course, the bringing back of Mexican superstar Selena Quintanilla. Most people who grew up listening to Selena’s music, much like myself, know about her story and her untimely death. This book comes to us at the perfect moment, as the person currently serving time for Selena’s murder, Yolanda Saldívar, will be eligible for parole on March 30th of 2025 after serving 30 years in prison. The book ends with an alternate timeline in which Selena doesn’t die—she goes on to make more “bops” and fall in love with Johnny Depp after they star in a movie and having a daughter and….
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar
This book, as the subheading suggests, is a meditation on race and the meanings and myths of “Latino.” The book focuses on defining what it means to be a Latine(x) person in the United States now and how that term itself—a Spanish-given term, much like the term “Hispanic”—erases our indigenous and African past for the more “favorable” European option. The book discusses themes ranging from Hollywood’s rebranding of colonialism in an attempt to redefine it as a heroic act, growing evermore violent in its onscreen portrayal as if trying to imitate the real life barbarism that occurred in Guatemala and other Central American countries in the final decades of the last century to the “passive” mass killings occurring at the US-Mexico border by US policy makers who understand the desert to be a natural death machine of which they can wash their hands clean when asked if they have had a hand in killing anyone attempting to seek asylum or emigrate to the US.
Popol Vuh translated by Michael Bazzett
The Popol Vuh, which translates into “Book of the Council,” “Book of the Community” or “The Sacred Book,” tells the story of creation according to the Maya—the thunder gods and the water serpent making land, the making of animals, and the three attempts to make humans. Much like the Bible, it features other myths but the main focus is on two sets of twin brothers (Jun and Wuqub and Hun Hanaphu and Xbalanque) who take on the gods of the underworld. The first set of brothers, the fathers of Hun Hanaphu and Xbalanque, disturb Vucub Came—the master of the underworld—with their game of pitz—a Meso-American ballgame best described today as a cross between soccer and basketball, where players must shoot a ball through a hoop using only their hips. Vucub Came challenges them to a game, then lords of the underworld trap and kill them. But Hun Hanaphu and Xbalanque, formed from the spit of the decapitated head of Hun Hanaphu, challenged years later, pass all of the tests set before them by the gods of the underworld and come out victorious.
All My Heroes Are Broke by Ariel Francisco
This poetry collection is divided into two sections—the first section takes place in New York City, the other in Miami. The poems in the collection are short, and yet the turn at the end of each one is a gut punch for which you can not brace. Each of the poems could be rapped over a beat you have to nod along to, which is exactly what the reader will find themselves doing while reading. The language is taut, no word out of place or used for filler, all guts and veins and bones, no fat.
Men of Maize by Miguel Ángel Asturias, translated by Gerald Martin
No list about Guatemalan writers would be complete without mentioning an Asturias book. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Asturias is well-known for his writing, specifically his novel, Mr. President, which, like Men of Maize, focuses on telling the novel through the point of view of multiple characters. I first came to Asturias by way of his story collection, Legends of Guatemala, which focuses on Maya mythology pre-Spanish conquest and the power struggle between the story telling of the Indigenous population and written word of the Spaniards. Men of Maize, much like the other books I have mentioned so far, is not an easy read. Divided into six sections, each from a different point of view covering the course of decades, the novel addresses the way of life of the Indigenous Maya population and its attempt to hold on to its culture; the maize at the center of the book is seen as sacred to the Maya, but the Ladinos see it as a means to an end—the achievement of modernity and monetary prosperity. The book relates the difference between the magical realm of the Maya and the “practical” world of the Ladinos and tells the stories of what it means when one culture attempts and succeeds to impose itself upon the other—the loss of identities, spiritualities, and histories.
If Today Were Tomorrow by Humberto Ak’abal, translated by Michael Bazzett
The poems in this collection, to my mind and ear, are like prayers to the earth, the sky, the sea, the land, and the gods that came before us. Ak’abal was of the same location as all of my ancestors—the highlands of Guatemala, from tribes settled along the Motagua River Valley—and wrote with legs and feet like roots anchored to the land. The poems appear as a vision and slowly lead the reader to an ending—one that ends on the page but continues in the mind; here is his poem, “Dusk,”: “Like a wounded rose, / evening / bleeds / slowly / into nothing. / Then even nothing / is no more.”
Knitting the Fog by Claudia D. Hernández
This memoir incorporates traditional prose with interspersed poetic forms to tell its story. Starting when Claudia was a child, focusing on age 5, when her mom ran away from her abusive husband and father of her children, Raul, leaving behind Claudia and her two sisters, Consuelo (9) and Sindy (15) with their aunt Soila, the book traces Claudia’s upbringing in Guatemala and her journey to “El Norte” and back. Claudia’s mother returns when Claudia is 8 and tells them that she married a man named Amado in America and that she plans to take them back with her. What follows is the journey through Guatemala and Mexico to their new life in the US, ending when Claudia is 13 during a return trip back to her homeland; but as the title poem says, “The soil knows no border.”
White Space by Jennifer De Leon
Covering topics ranging from her college years (and in the same vein as My Time Among the Whites by Jennine Capó Crucet) to her first visit to Guatemala at the age of twenty-eight, De Leon approaches her topics with retrospective clarity and tenderness. Born in the US but still feeling out of place in mostly white spaces with friends and colleagues who travel during breaks and summer, De Leon decides to go to Guatemala to stay for six months. Broken into three parts, the second part of the collection focuses on events during her visit—from her first day with her dad helping her get settled to re-learning Spanish to performing The Vagina Monologues in Spanish—De Leon bring humor to her experiences. The final section focuses on her writing once back from her travels, the raising of her child, and on the many return trips she made to the land of her ancestors.
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