Description
Book SynopsisIn these testimonies dictated to her lifelong friend, anthropologist Diane Rus, Maruch Mendez Perez describes her years of dreams, instruction, and experience, a narrative that sheds light on the basic values of her Chamula culture and cosmovision and that has remarkable parallels to concepts of the ancient Maya as interpreted by scholars.
Trade ReviewThis book is a masterpiece. Méndez Pérez has not only given us a narrative of inestimable importance, but Rus has enabled us to compare her understandings and knowledge of birds with those of other Maya peoples in Mesoamerica."—Christine Eber, author of
Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town: Water of Hope, Water of Sorrow"An extraordinary document. . . . It is not just a fascinating study of an indigenous woman's wisdom about birds, the sacred, and their role in the workings of the cosmos, it is also an exemplary model of intercultural conversation and experimentation. . . . A work of great ethnographic density and expressive beauty."—Pedro Pitarch, author of
The Jaguar and the Priest: An Ethnography of Tzeltal Souls
