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I am a translator specializing in Chinese historical novels, and also an academic researching marginalized groups in Chinese history—ethnic minorities, the disabled, people with mental health issues, and so on. The treatment of marginalized people tells you a lot about what is going on within mainstream society. I’ve always been interested in stories about people from distant times and places, and I have a particular love of long sagas, something that you can really get your teeth into. Kingdoms in Peril covers five hundred years of history: I translated this for my own enjoyment and was surprised when I realized that I’d managed to write 850,000 words for fun!
Four times the sun has died and been reborn, and now we are living in the world of the fifth sun.
In this wonderful imaginative rendering of Aztec history, we move between mythological and real time, following the Mexica people as they gain power and establish a great kingdom, and then suffer the disaster of Spanish attack. The voices of many different people speak through this story, men and women, telling us of the price that they paid each step of the way in the struggle to survive in a beautiful but brutal world.
In November 1519, Hernando Cortes walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story-and the story of what happened afterwards-has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated, and rarely consulted by…
A French emperor, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III who dreamed of an empire in Latin America and invaded Mexico; an Austrian aristocrat, the Habsburg Ferdinand Maximilian, ruling Mexico as a monarchy; Benito Juárez, who was born into an impoverished Mexican village but later became president, defying and defeating these European emperors. These are the extraordinary characters and events that led me to fall in love with Mexico’s history, and write my book, The Last Emperor of Mexico.
Mexican history is full of abrupt reversals. The life of Santa Anna, many times president and dictator of Mexico, is a wonderful example. Infamous in the United States for the Battle of the Alamo, where he gave no quarter to the defenders fighting for Texan independence, the general was vilified in Mexico for the far more heinous crime of losing Texas, once Mexican territory.
Two years later, his political career over, he lost his leg repelling French marines who were trying to seize the port of Veracruz. Santa Anna was now the saviour of Mexico, returning to power in 1841 and, for good measure, having his amputated leg buried with full military honours. Soon, however, he was forced to limp from office while an angry mob exhumed the leg, dragging it round Mexico City to humiliate their former leader. Yet this was far from the last time he held power.…
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1794-1876) is one of the most famous, and infamous, figures in Mexican history. Six times the country's president, he is consistently depicted as a traitor, a turncoat, and a tyrant-the exclusive cause of all of Mexico's misfortunes following the country's independence from Spain. He is also, as this biography makes clear, grossly misrepresented. Drawing on seventeen years of research into the politics of independent Mexico, Will Fowler provides a revised picture of Santa Anna's life, with new insights into his activities in his bailiwick of Veracruz and in his numerous military engagements. The Santa Anna…
A French emperor, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III who dreamed of an empire in Latin America and invaded Mexico; an Austrian aristocrat, the Habsburg Ferdinand Maximilian, ruling Mexico as a monarchy; Benito Juárez, who was born into an impoverished Mexican village but later became president, defying and defeating these European emperors. These are the extraordinary characters and events that led me to fall in love with Mexico’s history, and write my book, The Last Emperor of Mexico.
For many outside Mexico, the country is synonymous with the war on drugs. There is, of course, much more to Mexico than the view ossified in popular TV dramas like Netflix’s Narcos; however, organised crime has wrought horrifying levels of violence, and shaped the country in many ways. Making sense of all this is Benjamin T Smith’s book on the history of the drug trade. Combining the writing style of James Ellroy with in-depth research that puts most historians to shame, the book is, without doubt, the best English-language work ever produced on the topic.
The Mexican drug trade has inspired prejudiced narratives of a war between north and south, white and brown; between noble cops and vicious kingpins, corrupt politicians and powerful cartels. In this first comprehensive history of the trade, historian Benjamin T. Smith tells the real story of how and why this one-peaceful industry turned violent. He uncovers its origins and explains how this illicit business essentially built modern Mexico, affecting everything from agriculture to medicine to economics-and the country's all-important relationship with the United States.
Drawing on unprecedented archival research; leaked DEA, Mexican law enforcement, and cartel documents; and dozens of…
I am fascinated by the places where cultures intersect and the means by which they do so. I am an American lucky to live in gorgeous San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and previously in Hirakata, Japan; Shanghai, China; Suva, Fiji; and Oxford, England. Each move entailed a challenging but rewarding effort to absorb a new set of unwritten societal rules. A great way to grow is to immerse yourself in the unknown and have things you took for granted about how the world works suddenly come into question. Another is to learn from those who have gone before us, so I am delighted to share these wonderful books with you.
Under the Volcano is a difficult book worth the effort. Set in Quauhnahuac, now Cuernavaca, it follows the surreal last day in the life of bleakly alcoholic former British consul Geoffrey Firmin.
We witness interactions with his estranged wife, his half-brother, and a childhood friend—both of whom have probably had an affair with the wife—as well as various other undependable characters real and hallucinatory. For careful readers, Lowry offers a rich buffet of symbolism and allusions to the work of writers from Dante to Shakespeare.
I certainly missed a few of the references but enjoyed the hunt nonetheless. Under the Volcano features the foibles of British rather than American expats, but the lessons apply equally.
One of the twentieth century's great undisputed masterpieces, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano includes an introduction by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Modern Classics.
It is the fiesta 'Day of the Dead' in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his life. Drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him, the consul…
I’m an author, visual artist, and film producer. I’m originally from Mexico but studied fine art in London at Central St Martins School of art with a scholarship. I’ve had a wild career of writing, packaging, developing, and publishing books for more than a decade. You can see some of my visual art in galleries, museums, and my Instagram @leopoldoleopoldo or in my most recent illustrated novel Monarca. My forthcoming novel, Piñata, is a supernatural possession story driven by the real horrors of colonialism in my native Mexico. I wrote it as an outlet for a simultaneous love and rage at the world, history, my country, and current events.
It’s an all-too-common crime of a history written by societies victors that brilliant women like Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz are doomed after living a life enriching this world’s literature and thought.
It was rage at this kind of historical injustice which inspired my writing of my book.
Sor Juana’s great poem "First Dream" also inspired me not only in my first novel, but in many of the visual art I did in my 20’s. We even called my daughter Inés, partially in homage to her.
Octavio Paz’s masterpiece that won him the Nobel Prize of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is an incredible time travelling journey. It’s so wonderful that sometimes you think you are reading a memoir and go deep inside her poetry, science, love life, and dreams.
It is biography, history, literary criticism, and an expose against the Vatican’s minions who were colonizing…
Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of her age.
Her life reads like a novel. A spirited and precocious girl, one of six illegitimate children, is sent to live with relatives in the capital city. She becomes known for her beauty, wit, and amazing erudition, and is taken into the court as the Vicereine's protegee. For five…
I’m a person like you who has lived difficult situations, has had losses, made mistakes, and deals with bad days wondering about my existence and purpose in life. I have a gift, and it's writing; I began sending reflective messages to the people at my office and that’s when I noticed that people loved them. Years later, after reading several books and accumulating more experience, I realized that there are several experiences that are common to all, but few questioned. Therefore, I decided to share my insight and thoughts in my second book, hoping to help people be a better version of themselves and live their lives to their fullest.
This book first caught my attention for the title—it’s a common Mexican phrase we use at the end of a fairytale story.
When I began reading it, I loved that the author used different color fonts so we can identify which character is talking. I found it very entertaining and fun.
When I read it, I was living in pain, longing to have a partner. This book helped me to see that nothing can be rushed; everything happens when it must happen. I learned that I could use fear to my favor and live life as I want, because the rest will come. Life is always on our side. And from time to time, I still read again the key parts that helped me when I was in pain.
Not The End was first released in 2001 and since that first edition has been read and reread, given, lent and recommended by readers of all ages, of all genders, of different religions, preferences and countries. It has passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, changed publisher, cover, color and presentation. Less than two years after its publication, it became a national bestseller in Mexico and has deeply touched the hearts and lives of thousands of people.
Now eleven years later, Not The End celebrates its twenty-ninth edition in Mexico and the first one in it´s translation…
I am fascinated by the places where cultures intersect and the means by which they do so. I am an American lucky to live in gorgeous San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and previously in Hirakata, Japan; Shanghai, China; Suva, Fiji; and Oxford, England. Each move entailed a challenging but rewarding effort to absorb a new set of unwritten societal rules. A great way to grow is to immerse yourself in the unknown and have things you took for granted about how the world works suddenly come into question. Another is to learn from those who have gone before us, so I am delighted to share these wonderful books with you.
If you ask American expats in San Miguel de Allende how they “discovered” this beautiful city in the central highlands as far from a beach as one can be in Mexico, a significant percentage of us will mention Tony Cohan’s lovely memoir, On Mexican Time, set in the San Miguel of 1985.
San Miguel is often referred to as magical, and most of us tend to think of whatever moment we personally arrived as peak San Miguel magic. The longer we’re here, the more nostalgic we grow for that lost era. The thing about magic, though, is that it can evolve. Today’s San Miguel de Allende is less sleepy and quirky than the town Tony described, but it is still abundantly charmed.
An American writer and his wife find a new home—and a new lease on life—in the charming sixteenth-century hill town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
When Los Angeles novelist Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, visited central Mexico one winter they fell under the spell of a place where the pace of life is leisurely, the cobblestone streets and sun-splashed plazas are enchanting, and the sights and sounds of daily fiestas fill the air. Awakened to needs they didn’t know they had, they returned to California, sold their house and cast off for a new life in San…
I’m an author and illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a Latin American, I think it's important to have books with stories about our realities and culture that feature Latino people as the protagonists. I hope you enjoy my recommendations!
A story in which the author celebrates her place of origin, her family, and her culture. It's about magic, and how it can take different forms, like when people's hands touch the earth or when houses turn into homes.
I love that the book feels so personal. The illustrations are beautiful.
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What is this book about?
In her debut as author and illustrator, Mirelle Ortega shares her own story of growing up on her family's pineapple farm in Mexico, where she learned the true meaning of magicI learned that magic isn't good or bad, it just is. Sometimes it gives, sometimes it takes. Sometimes life blossoms, sometimes it wilts.Growing up on a pineapple farm in Mexico, a girl discovers the true meaning of the word magic in this truly magical picture book about change and transformation of all kinds-what we can't control, such as natural disasters and loss, and what we can. Magic can transform dirt…
I have always believed in the extraordinary capacity of ordinary people to illuminate the contours of any particular place at any particular time. While the time periods have varied, for me the particular place has always been Mexico. Mexico is my aleph – the daybreak and nightfall of my own personal intellectual and emotional development, consisting of seemingly interminable fits of research and writing and huevoneando, each in equal measures and of equal import. Mexico and its history have become my life’s work. I am a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, and these are my favorite “little” stories to use in teaching, representing five distinct periods in Mexico’s history.
In this masterpiece of historical narrative, Paul Sullivan investigates the 1875 sacking of a sugar plantation (called Xuxub) and the murder of its American manager by Maya rebels. Located on the geographical frontier between “Ladino” and Maya society, Xuxub became a microcosm of all of the conflicts that haunted Mexico as it entered its “Guilded Age”: inter-elite rivalries, international competition in the wake of the U.S.-Mexico War, and the overwhelming fear that the nation’s Indigenous population would rise up against encroaching liberal capitalism. It all comes together in a murder mystery, written more like true crime than an academic text, right down to the final poetic twist. This is an immensely enjoyable read, so much so that I have read it no fewer than fifteen times.
Today, foreigners travel to the Yucatan for ruins, temples, and pyramids, white sand beaches and clear blue water. One hundred years ago, they went for cheap labor, an abundance of land, and the opportunity to make a fortune exporting cattle, henequen fiber, sugarcane, or rum. Sometimes they found death.
In 1875 an American plantation manager named Robert Stephens and a number of his workers were murdered by a band of Maya rebels. To this day, no one knows why. Was it the result of feuding between aristocratic families for greater power and wealth? Was it the foreseeable consequence of years…
I am fascinated by the places where cultures intersect and the means by which they do so. I am an American lucky to live in gorgeous San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and previously in Hirakata, Japan; Shanghai, China; Suva, Fiji; and Oxford, England. Each move entailed a challenging but rewarding effort to absorb a new set of unwritten societal rules. A great way to grow is to immerse yourself in the unknown and have things you took for granted about how the world works suddenly come into question. Another is to learn from those who have gone before us, so I am delighted to share these wonderful books with you.
I read The Old Gringo in college before I had any inkling that I would one day be a not-too-old gringa making her home in San Miguel de Allende.
Fuentes imagines meaningful final days for Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist who in 1913 headed off into Mexico at the age of 71, never to be heard from again. I love this book for the way Fuentes captures and probes profound differences and lingering mistrust between our cultures as well as the universal human struggles for meaning, opportunity, security, and belonging.
While Fuentes’ old gringo, we are told, came to die a worthy soldier’s death in Mexico, the gringos of my generation are here to live fully and well.
One of Carlos Fuentes's greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa's soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.
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