Showing posts with label Cabeza de Vaca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cabeza de Vaca. Show all posts
Monday, November 18, 2019
From the Archives: A Visit to the Primera Casa de la Imprenta de América in Mexico City
>> READ THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM
Monday, June 26, 2017
"Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla" A Longform Essay About the Mexican Literary Landscape and the Power of the Book
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| Get this essay about the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book in KINDLE |
Featured on the cover are my writing assistants, Uliberto Quetzalpugtl (aka Uls) and Washingtoniana Quetzalpugalotl (aka La Wash), both thinking profound thoughts... probably about the neighbor's cat. (As for books, they go for the corners.)
If you have been following my blog (in which case, bless you), you might be wondering, what in Timbuktu does this long essay on the Mexican literary landscape have to do with my current work in-progress on Far West Texas? Plenty, actually, starting with Cabeza de Vaca's gobsmackingly bizarre Informe.
One of the several reasons I wrote this essay was to get my mind around the literary nuns of the baroque period— in Mexico, the prime and cherished example is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Another literary nun not mentioned in this essay, but who will appear in my book on Far West Texas, is María de Agreda, the Blue Lady. Much more about María de Agreda and her exterioridades anon.
Above all, I wrote "Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla" for U.S. friends and colleagues who want to get past the heavily-retailed clichés about Mexico. This essay is at once my love letter to Mexico and a distillation of all that I have come to understand after 30 years of living here and over two decades of writing about Mexico and translating Mexican literature. I sincerely hope it will invite you to consider our southern neighbor in new ways— and so, consider our own republic in new ways as well.
Read some excerpts from "Dispatch from the Sister Republic":
> Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico
> What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
> A Visit to the Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América, Mexico City
>> Get "Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla" in in Kindle here.<<
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| Kindle edition |
Also in the Kindle store you will find my memoir of yore, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. Available as always in Kindle from Dancing Chiva, it will be for free in the Kindle store—yes, free—for two days later this month, July 22 and 23. So, I invite you to note those free days in your calendar, or shell out the clams. Or not. Or whatever. I invite you to read more about this book, reviews, and excerpts here. (The original hardcover was published by the University of Utah Press and the still in-print paperback is available from Milkweed Editions and all the usual online and independent booksellers.)
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> Your comments are always very welcome. Write to me here.
Monday, May 08, 2017
Dispatch from Mexico City: On the "Relación" of Cabeza de Vaca
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| La Relacion de Cabeza de Vaca |
> Read it here.
This is an excerpt from a long essay about the Mexican literary landscape and the power of books, "Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla" which is
> Check out the Kindle here.
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| This long essay about the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book is available in Kindle. |
P.S. You can view the Spanish text of the Relación of Cabeza de Vaca here.
> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.
Monday, March 20, 2017
What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
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| Door to the quarters of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, "the Tenth Muse." Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017. |
As I told Paula, woefully past the deadline, I had asked the Muse for a slider, a yummy little note about books in Mexico, but she delivered the whole ox. In other words, my "Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla" is a novela-length essay about the Mexican literary landscape, from prehispanic codices to contemporary writers. It is what it is, I don't want start chopping (there would be blood!!), but of course, a 30 page essay is too long for a magazine.
Scoundrel Time will be publishing an excerpt about Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relación-- a nearly 500 year-old memoir little known outside of Mexico and Texas, yet that stands as one of the most astonishing and important books ever written. (
As for my full-length essay, "Dispatch from the Sister Republic,"
Herewith my other favorite excerpt, about the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz:
Excerpt from
"DISPATCH FROM THE SISTER REPUBLIC OR, PAPELITO HABLA"
by C.M. MAYO
For rare book collectors, Mecca is Mexico City’s Colonia Centro, and for such aficionados of mexicana as myself, its sanctum sanctorum, the Librería Madero—by the way, recently relocated from the Avenida Madero to the Avenida Isabela La Católica, facing the the formidable wedding cake-white corner of the 16th century ex-convent of San Jerónimo, known today as the Claustro de Sor Juana, that is, the Convent of Sister Juana.
And if you would not know Sor Juana from a poinsettia, gentle reader, with all respect, you must crowbar out that boulder of ignorance, for which you will be rewarded by a glimpse of the diamond of the Mexico’s Baroque period, the first great Latin American poet and playwright, “the Tenth Muse,” a cloistered nun.
Texan poet John Campion was the first to translate Sor Juana’s magnum opus, “Primero sueño,” as “The Dream,” in 1983. (Alas, that date is not a typo.) Campion’s translation is out of print, but he offers a free PDF download of the text on his website, worldatuningfork.com. The first lines of Campion’s translation beautifully capture Sor Juana’s uncanny power:
In her time Sor Juana was one of the most learned individuals, man or woman, in the New World, and her prodigious oeuvre, from love poems to polemics, comedies to enigmas to plays to villancicos, was exceptionally sophisticated, so much so that its interpretation is today the province of a small army of sorjuanistas. As Mexico’s Nobel laureate poet Octavio Paz writes in Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden), “A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are in fact resurrections.”
And perchance startling discoveries. In his 2011 El eclipse del Sueño de Sor Juana, Américo Larralde Rangel makes a radiant case that her “Primero Sueño” describes the dawn over Mexico City after a lunar eclipse on the solstice of the winter of 1684.
In the Librería Madero I find on the first shelf, facing out, two new books by sorjuanistas: one about Sor Juana’s family, another, just published by a Legionario de Cristo, that purports to decipher her twenty enigmas. The latter work incorporates a series of contemporary paintings of Sor Juana in the baroque style—dim backgrounds, crowns and scepters of flowers, and afloat above her head, fat-tummied cherubs, flounces, unspooling bundles of draperies. But these Sor Juanas look too pert, make too coy a tilt of the head. It seems to me as if, session over, the model might have just tossed off that habit to wriggle into some yoga wear.
Yes, just as in the United States, in Mexican cities yoga studios have been popping up like honguitos.
But if a vision of modern Mexico would have been obscure to Sor Juana, by no means is Sor Juana obscure in modern Mexico. She has inspired scores of poets and musicians; there have been movies, documentaries, and novels, most recently, Mónica Lavin’s 2009 best-seller Yo, la peor (I, the Worst—yet to be translated into English—fingers crossed that Patricia Dubrava will do it).
As I write this in 2017, Sor Juana graces the celadon-green 200 peso bill. From the portrait by Miguel Cabrera in the Museo Nacional de Historia: a serenely intelligent young woman’s face framed in a wimple, and behind her, her quills and inkpot and an open book of her poetry—and a few lines:
And if you would not know Sor Juana from a poinsettia, gentle reader, with all respect, you must crowbar out that boulder of ignorance, for which you will be rewarded by a glimpse of the diamond of the Mexico’s Baroque period, the first great Latin American poet and playwright, “the Tenth Muse,” a cloistered nun.
Texan poet John Campion was the first to translate Sor Juana’s magnum opus, “Primero sueño,” as “The Dream,” in 1983. (Alas, that date is not a typo.) Campion’s translation is out of print, but he offers a free PDF download of the text on his website, worldatuningfork.com. The first lines of Campion’s translation beautifully capture Sor Juana’s uncanny power:
Pyramidal
death-born shadow of earth
aimed at heaven
a proud point of vain obelisks
pretending to scale the Stars
In the Librería Madero I find on the first shelf, facing out, two new books by sorjuanistas: one about Sor Juana’s family, another, just published by a Legionario de Cristo, that purports to decipher her twenty enigmas. The latter work incorporates a series of contemporary paintings of Sor Juana in the baroque style—dim backgrounds, crowns and scepters of flowers, and afloat above her head, fat-tummied cherubs, flounces, unspooling bundles of draperies. But these Sor Juanas look too pert, make too coy a tilt of the head. It seems to me as if, session over, the model might have just tossed off that habit to wriggle into some yoga wear.
Yes, just as in the United States, in Mexican cities yoga studios have been popping up like honguitos.
But if a vision of modern Mexico would have been obscure to Sor Juana, by no means is Sor Juana obscure in modern Mexico. She has inspired scores of poets and musicians; there have been movies, documentaries, and novels, most recently, Mónica Lavin’s 2009 best-seller Yo, la peor (I, the Worst—yet to be translated into English—fingers crossed that Patricia Dubrava will do it).
As I write this in 2017, Sor Juana graces the celadon-green 200 peso bill. From the portrait by Miguel Cabrera in the Museo Nacional de Historia: a serenely intelligent young woman’s face framed in a wimple, and behind her, her quills and inkpot and an open book of her poetry—and a few lines:
Hombres necios que acusáis
Ex-convento of San Jerónimo,
now the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana,
Mexico City. Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017.
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis.
I cannot pretend to render the music of Sor Juana’s lines into English. But here’s a rough go at their literal meaning: You pig-headed men who accuse women unjustly, blind to the fact that you are the cause for that which you cast blame.
[.... CONTINUE READING]
P.S. Those of you who follow my blog may be wondering, what in blazes does this have to do with my book in-progress on Far West Texas? More anon about the truly fantastic connections.
>> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.
UPDATE: "Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla," my long essay on the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle.
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| amazon.com |
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
More Madero: Interviews by Jeffrey Mishlove and a Review by Michael Tymn
It's sometimes curious the way books wend their way to their readers. When I started out writing under the name C.M. Mayo more than (ayy) two decades ago, like most young writers, I hyper-focussed on short-term goals such as getting an agent, getting published, winning prizes, and selling oh-so-many copies. I still relish getting published, winning prizes, and selling copies, when that happens to happen, but my view of the value and meaning of this peculiar endeavor we call "writing books" has since expanded into more esoteric realms, and in more ways than one.
As those of you who have been following this blog well know, back in 2014 I brought out Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, which includes my translation of Manual espírita, by "Bhima," that is, the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. In other words, I wrote a book about and translated a book of transcendental importance to the 1910 Revolution itself, among other things, to which, for more than a century, only a handful of specialists in Mexican history had paid more than a whit of attention. (And why not? Two words: cognitive dissonance.)
The thing is, a book is both a commodity, as anyone who works with a major New York publishing house or, say, a rare books dealer, can aver, and a mystical package, that is, a complex amalgam of thought-forms that, so encapsulated, code on paper, can travel forward across even vast realms of time and space to unleash its contents into the imaginal realm of a human mind. When that happens to happen.
Right now, as I am working on a book about Far West Texas, I have on my desk a mystical package that is 474 years old. Specifically: a paperback edition of the English translation by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz of the Relación or report of 1547 by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to the King of Spain-- a story that is an odyssey if there ever was one.
To the news. I am very honored to announce that just this week Michael Tymn reviewed Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution on his blog over at White Crow Books.
Among many other works, Tymn is the author of Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife.
And I am also honored to announce that Jeffrey Mishlove conducted a three part interview with me about Spiritism in the Mexican Revolution for his program "New Thinking Allowed."As of this week, the first two of three segments All three segments are now on-line.
Mishlove is the author of The PK Man, a book that took him 20 years to publish, is now 15 years old, and is yet finding ever more readers. It may have gotten a slow start but I believe that Mishlove's The PK Man will stand as one of the landmark works of the 20th century. I explain in my forthcoming review of Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber's Super Natural.
As those of you who have been following this blog well know, back in 2014 I brought out Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, which includes my translation of Manual espírita, by "Bhima," that is, the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. In other words, I wrote a book about and translated a book of transcendental importance to the 1910 Revolution itself, among other things, to which, for more than a century, only a handful of specialists in Mexican history had paid more than a whit of attention. (And why not? Two words: cognitive dissonance.)
The thing is, a book is both a commodity, as anyone who works with a major New York publishing house or, say, a rare books dealer, can aver, and a mystical package, that is, a complex amalgam of thought-forms that, so encapsulated, code on paper, can travel forward across even vast realms of time and space to unleash its contents into the imaginal realm of a human mind. When that happens to happen.
Right now, as I am working on a book about Far West Texas, I have on my desk a mystical package that is 474 years old. Specifically: a paperback edition of the English translation by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz of the Relación or report of 1547 by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to the King of Spain-- a story that is an odyssey if there ever was one.
To the news. I am very honored to announce that just this week Michael Tymn reviewed Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution on his blog over at White Crow Books. Among many other works, Tymn is the author of Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife.
And I am also honored to announce that Jeffrey Mishlove conducted a three part interview with me about Spiritism in the Mexican Revolution for his program "New Thinking Allowed."
Mishlove is the author of The PK Man, a book that took him 20 years to publish, is now 15 years old, and is yet finding ever more readers. It may have gotten a slow start but I believe that Mishlove's The PK Man will stand as one of the landmark works of the 20th century. I explain in my forthcoming review of Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber's Super Natural.
> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Cyberflanerie: Mexico Book Edition
I'm presenting my book-- translated by Agustin Cadena-- Odisea metafísca hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, next week, on the 25th at 7 pm at the Centro de Estudios de la Historia de México CARSO in Mexico City. Presenters include Rose Mary Salum, Luis Cerda, Javier Garcíadiego, Manuel Guerra de Luna, and Yolia Tortolero Cervantes. >>Details here. << I am especially delighted to be able to present the book in this venue because it is the home of President Francisco I. Madero's personal library, very possibly the most important collection of late 19th - early 20th century esoterica in Latin America.
Food historian Rachael Laudan's superb Cuisine and Empire, which has quite a bit to do with Mexico, is now available in paperback.
Nancy Marie Brown recommends Anders Winroth's The Age of the Vikings, so it must be good. I downloaded the Kindle and am avidly reading-- I have this theory (could be solid, could be a marshmallow puff) about raiding by Vikings and Comanches... stay tuned.
(Just an aside: the Vikings smoked pot as early as the mid-9th century.)
Updates on my recommended books on Mexico page include Brian DeLays's The War of a Thousand Deserts. Must reading for anyone who wants to understand the US-Mexican War-- and the Comanches. More about this book anon.
Out in March, looks fascinating: Sharman Apt Russel's YA novel Teresa of the New World.
Out in April, must read: Sam Quinones' Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.
(>Read my review of his True Tales from Another Mexico for Wilson Quarterly.)
Top of my reading tower: Laila Lalami's novel based on the story of Cabeza de Vaca & Co., The Moor's Account.
>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.
Food historian Rachael Laudan's superb Cuisine and Empire, which has quite a bit to do with Mexico, is now available in paperback.
Nancy Marie Brown recommends Anders Winroth's The Age of the Vikings, so it must be good. I downloaded the Kindle and am avidly reading-- I have this theory (could be solid, could be a marshmallow puff) about raiding by Vikings and Comanches... stay tuned.
(Just an aside: the Vikings smoked pot as early as the mid-9th century.)
Updates on my recommended books on Mexico page include Brian DeLays's The War of a Thousand Deserts. Must reading for anyone who wants to understand the US-Mexican War-- and the Comanches. More about this book anon.
Out in March, looks fascinating: Sharman Apt Russel's YA novel Teresa of the New World.
Out in April, must read: Sam Quinones' Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.
(>Read my review of his True Tales from Another Mexico for Wilson Quarterly.)
Top of my reading tower: Laila Lalami's novel based on the story of Cabeza de Vaca & Co., The Moor's Account.
>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.
Monday, October 22, 2012
World Waiting for a Dream: Travels in Far West Texas
Meanwhile, listen in any time to the ongoing Marfa Mondays podcasts which, so far, include interviews with art expert and museum curator Mary Bones, artist Avram Dumitrescu, Big Bend wilderness expert Charles Angell, Chihuahuan Desert bee expert Cynthia McAlister, Rock hound Paul Graybeal of Moonlight Gemstones, and Yours Truly recounting some super weird experiences with the Marfa Lights. And... I've got several more podcasts in line to upload this month and next. There will be a total of 24 podcasts through the end of 2013 at which point I expect I'll have a complete draft of the book. Which may look nothing like the podcasts. A ver qué tal.
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Brutal Journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the Epic First Crossing of America by Paul Schneider
It's peculiar that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is not better known. That old saw, "truth is stranger than fiction" applies in his case, or at least his version of events, which one might as well believe because the fantastic fact is, Cabeza de Vaca did reappear in northern Mexico in late April of 1536, one of only four survivors of the 400 who participated in the Narváez expedition to Florida in March of 1528. He left a memoir, translated as Castaways, and based on this, as well as other documents and archaelogical research about the peoples he encountered, Paul Schnieder has written a jaw-stopping story that reads like a novel. It's only January, but without a doubt, Brutal Journey will go on my top 10 books read list for 2012. A few links for surfers:Paul Schneider's website
The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca 1542, translated by Fanny Bandelier, 1905
Nicholás Echeverría's movie, Cabeza de Vaca, on Netflix
A bit about Guillermo Sheridan's screenplay for that same movie
Angell Expeditions, owned by Charlie Angell, expert wilderness guide, who is very knowledgable about the areas Cabeza de Vaca visited in the Big Bend region (La Junta de los Ríos and northwest).
UPDATE : Listen to my interview with Charles Angell.
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