Girl from Chimel // Honey Jar // Secret Legacy

In 1992, Indigenous and human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s Nobel Peace Prize brought to a world audience the truths of the U.S.-orchestrated and –supported Guatemalan government’s 36-year campaign of genocide against the Maya there—and of one of the longest guerrilla resistance movements in Latin America. After her brother and mother were “disappeared” and her activist father was tortured and burned alive in the assault on the Spanish Embassy in 1980, Menchú went into exile and took up residence in Mexico, where she taught herself Spanish in order to denounce to the world the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army.

Despite the hardships and poverty her people have endured—and rebelled against—ever since the Spanish conquest, Menchú’s wonderful recounting of her childhood stories in these titles, in close collaboration with Guatemalan author Liano, shows what it is to live with beauty and integrity, with land, culture and community. Domi’s oil paintings, on a jeweled palette of all the colors of the Mayan forests, jungles and mountains, are a luminous symphony of colors and images.

author: Rigoberta Menchú Tum

author: Dante Liano

translator (Spanish to English): David Unger

illustrator: Domi

Groundwood Books/ House of Anansi Press, 2003

grades 3-7

Maya

As The Girl from Chimel begins, Rigoberta introduces herself and her village:

I am Rigoberta. Chimel is the name of my village when it’s large, and Laj Chimel when it’s small, because sometimes the village is large and sometimes it’s small. During good times, when there’s honey and the corn is so heavy it bends its green stalks, when the yellow, green, purple, white and multicolored orchids bloom, displaying their beauty, then my village is big and it’s called Chimel. During bad times, when the river dries up and ponds can fit into the hollow of my hand, when evil men walk the earth and sadness can hardly be endured, the village becomes small and is called Laj Chimel. Right now, I’m remembering Chimel…

It is in the hearts of the people of Chimel, then and now, that the old stories reside. Traditionally, told stories such as the ones in Menchú’s trilogy teach children how the world works. For young Rigoberta and other Mayan children, this is how they are taught about the history of the land and right behavior; about compassion, courage, and generosity; about asking permission from the nahuales, the spirits who reside in everything; about planting seeds and harvesting fruits; and ultimately, about fighting injustice and struggling for a better world.

author: Rigoberta Menchú Tum

author: Dante Liano

translator (Spanish to English): David Unger

illustrator: Domi

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 2006

grades 3-7 

Maya

In The Honey Jar, Menchú imparts some of the cultural knowledge she learned as a child: How Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Moon created the stars, and Mother Earth and Father Sky, whom they carefully instructed in the creation of sea, land, plants, and animals. How each creature was assigned to be a nahual, a keeper of something. How the elders were given power and wisdom and why they deserve respect. What happens when people violate nature’s laws and don’t apologize and what happens when they do. How monkeys are descended from humans (not the other way around). How the weasel taught people to be grateful for what they are given. How a man and a buzzard exchanged bodies and what they learned from their horrible experience. How the hormigo tree, suffering from nostalgia—the illness borne of longing “to sing and release from its heart all the trills the birds had sung throughout its life”—is given the gift of music.

author: Rigoberta Menchú Tum

author: Dante Liano

translator (Spanish to English): David Unger

illustrator: Domi

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 2008

grades 3-7 

Maya

In The Secret Legacy, Seven-year-old Ixkem’s grandfather is 100 years old, and he is ready to pass on his legacy and knowledge. Of all the people in the village, Grandfather chooses his youngest granddaughter to be the new caretaker of the cornfields. “But I’m too little,” Ixkem protests. “Neither age nor size has anything to do with it,” her grandfather assures her.

Off they go together, the old man and the little girl, through the forest, to the cornfield, the “best place to scare off parakeets, blackbirds, wild boar, squirrels, turtle doves, the smallest of worms and moths and even a few invisible insects who wanted to eat the corn. Now it would be Ixkem’s job.” Her yelling and thumping reach the nahuales who live at the center of the earth. A committee of b’e’n (as the nahuales are called in K’iche’ language) brings Ixkem down to their underground turf, where she tells them about life on the surface and the amazing stories her grandfather told her.

Among them: How an arrogant, boastful lion learns a lesson in humility. How the futures of young children can be shaped by what is done to their umbilical cords. What makes good people good and bad people bad. How a hummingbird brings happiness into the world. About the miracle of falling in love and the requirement of a lengthy courtship. How happiness comes from a peaceful heart and the love that others know how to give. Why the light in our eyes is a reflection of those who love us.

In exchange for these stories, the b’e’n whisper a secret in Ixkem’s ear for her to take back to her grandfather. Now that he knows that Ixken will hold this secret legacy for the next hundred years and that the Mayan lineage will “live forever in the forests, in the jungles, in the mountains and on the coasts of Guatemala,” the grandfather happily closes his eyes.

When one considers the past and recent history of the Maya, Menchú’s children’s stories become even more poignant, and each story in each book has a significant message for children today. As Ixkem explains to the tiny b’e’n,

There are some bad people with lots of power….They declare war on others, they enslave their fellow man, and they don’t know how to share their wealth. Of course there are good people who fight for peace, set slaves free and give to others. The future of the world depends on these good people.

In The Girl from Chimel, there is a story of Rigoberta’s mother, who as a child fought off a pack of coyotes to rescue her pet pig. It was said that the whole village was awed by her courage.

Our elders said, “This is a good sign. She’ll grow up to be a brave woman who will survive many challenges. She should thank her nahuales and they in turn will give her strength and wisdom and will protect her memory forever. Her sons and daughters and grandchildren will all be courageous.” 

If there’s a word to describe Rigoberta Menchú Tum and her mother and all the Maya who continue to struggle to maintain land, culture and community, that word would be “courageous.”

These three beautiful storybooks are about a happy little girl, secure in her world, with a “heart full of sunlight,” who, as an adult, wants for the world all that she had: “a mountain to protect me, a river to refresh me, birds to sing to me.” Both Rigoberta Menchú and her stories are an international treasure. Highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/22/14)

This review first appeared in MultiCultural Review. We thank Editor-in-Chief Lyn Miller-Lachmann for permission.

Popol Vuh: A Sacred Book of the Maya

author: Victor Montejo

translator: David Unger

illustrator: Luis Garay

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 1999

grades 6-up 

Maya

If you follow the story of the creation and survival of the Popol Vuh —the sacred book of the Maya, one of the oldest and most profound and influential books of the Americas—you will also follow the trail of the creation and survival of the Maya themselves. In the language of the K’iche’, Montejo writes in the introduction, “pop” means “straw mat,” a Mayan metaphor for “power,” and “vuh” or “wuj,” means “paper,” so Popol Vuh essentially means “the Book of Power.” This sacred text was created thousands of years ago, both orally and in Maya hieroglyphic script.

When the Spanish came to conquer, their trail of destruction included the burning of the Mayan sacred codices. But the stories survived in the Mayan oral tradition, and in 1558, they were again put into writing by a young Mayan man who had learned to write the K’iche’ language in Latin characters. The Popol Vuh was lost, found in 1701, translated into Spanish, then lost again for more than a century, resurfaced in 1854, was taken to Europe and translated into French, lost yet again, bought and sold a number of times, and finally found its way back to the Americas, where it is now housed in Chicago’s Newberry Library. This surviving Popol Vuh is written in parallel K’iche’ and Spanish, and a number of different versions and interpretations exist.

Victor Montejo, a retired professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis, is a poet, storyteller, human rights activist and anthropologist, studying in depth his own Jakaltek Mayan people. After the destruction of his village of Jakaltenango, in which Guatemalan soldiers killed his brother[1], Montejo’s name appeared on a death squad list and he was forced to flee to the US. Since then, his life’s work has been to make known, in a variety of ways, both the Mayan traditional stories[2] and the continuing human rights violations confronting the Maya. The oral stories of the Popol Vuh, in the Jakaltek language, remain in his memory and course through his blood.

In his adaptation of the Popol Vuh, Montejo has made a written version of these stories accessible to children for the first time. The stories—of gods and demigods and the creation of the natural world—are told in four parts. The first and third parts consist of the creation stories of the earth, the animals, and the humans. After a few false starts—the clay people and the wooden people have to be destroyed because neither has the ability to give proper thanks—the Creators and Makers, the fathers and mothers of all things, settle on the corn people, who alone have both language and limited vision.

The second part (which takes place before the creation of the humans) tells of the adventures of Jun Junajpu and Wuqub’ Junajpu, the first set of twins, whose encounter with the Lords of Xib’alb’a—the gods of the underworld—ends in disaster; and the twins’ descendants, Junajpu and Ixb’alanke, the Amazing Twins, who finally defeat the Lords of Xib’alb’a—not only because they have magical powers, but also because they’ve learned the lessons of the past and rely on the animals and insects for information and assistance. Part Four is a narration of the founding of the tribes, the story of the death of the first fathers, and the genealogy of the K’iche’ kings and their descendants. The book ends with a helpful glossary of gods, demigods, the lords of Xib’alb’a, the human world, animals, plants and places.

Montejo’s book features an excellent translation by Guatemalan-born writer and translator David Unger; and Spanish-speaking children will enjoy hearing and reading Montejo’s original Spanish-language adaptation, Popol Vuj: Libro Sagrado de los Maya (Groundwood, 1999).

Talented Nicaraguan artist Luis Garay has rendered the full-page illustrations and several double-page spreads in deep, rich acrylic colors, on a palette of mostly browns, greens and blues. His amazingly detailed paintings of lush jungle scenes depict the gods and demigods, for the most part, as ordinary-looking human beings—including the fearsome gods of Xib’alb’a, whose only difference from everyone else is their masks. Like traditional oral stories, Montejo’s tellings do not talk down to young readers and listeners; rather, these vivid images and characterizations will captivate them.

In the Popol Vuh, children learn, and adults are reminded, not only how things came to be, but also how everything is related; there is subtlety and complexity, and the young reader, who is assumed to be intelligent, is gently teased into understanding what is to be understood. I would not hesitate to read this beautiful book with younger children. However, because of the nature of the stories, I would not assign it as individual reading—any more than I would any other sacred text. Highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

A few words about traditional stories and the Popol Vuh

Sacred traditional stories embody and transmit the mythos of a people: they tell of how things came to be and they relay—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly—instructions about right relation to the world. For millennia, people with the kind of “oral memory” who could preserve these stories, detail by detail, year after year, were entrusted to transmit them. Over time, the stories have changed, yet they are still passed on, like an original seed, from generation to generation.

As children mature, the stories grow in meaning for them. Mayan children might ask an elder relative to tell them a particular story, over and over, and each time they hear the story, they learn more. A child might ask, for instance, “Grandma, tell me the one about how the mosquito helped the Amazing Twins.” The elder does not recite a moral; to do so would be to insult the child’s intelligence and autonomy. And it would not occur to a child to ask what the story is supposed to teach. As children mature, they learn. There’s plenty of time.

It’s been said that, once a traditional oral story has been put into print, it is no longer traditional because it no longer has the flexibility of orality. It’s also been said that, because of the centuries of invasion and occupation of the world’s Indigenous peoples, there is probably no totally “authentic” telling of anything anymore.

As with traditional stories such as the Popol Vuh, there will always be questions. After the Spanish destroyed the sacred Mayan codices, did the Catholic Church change and subvert the teachings of the Popol Vuh? In its written form, did the Church rework the ancient story to make it fit into their theology so that it would be easier to convert the Maya? In Montejo’s version of the Popol Vuh, there appear to be analogies to the Christian concepts of “virgin birth,” “resurrection” and “hell.” Is it possible that the Popol Vuh, which is older than Christianity, already contained these concepts? We may never know.

—BHS
(posted 4/7/13)

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[1] In his Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village (Curbstone, 1987), an eyewitness account of the army attack on his village and its tragic aftermath, Montejo describes the daily reality of dictatorship and repression.

[2] See, for instance, El Q’anil: Man of Lightning (University of Arizona, 2001) and The Bird Who Cleans the World and other Mayan Fables (Curbstone, 1991).