Central American Book of the Dead
Description
Poet Balam Rodrigo's Central American Book of the Dead (Libro centroamericano
de los muertos), winner of the 2018 Premio Aguascalientes, Mexico's highest poetry
honor, is a sequence of poems in multiple voices, interwoven with the author's own
narrative, about Central American migrants and refugees, living and dead, journeying
through Mexico to the north. The book also interweaves altered passages from A Brief
Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) by Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish
colonist (later friar and bishop) who became the first and fiercest critic of Spanish
colonialism in the New World and the enslavement of indigenous people.
The work's importance has already been well recognized in Mexico. For readers
in the U.S. and the English-speaking world, it draws a compelling portrait of one of the
most critical stories of our time, in poems of great formal variety and lyrical depth: the
massive migration of Central Americans fleeing terror, crime, and extreme poverty, and
the persecution and danger they face in traveling through Mexico to the United States.
The book is divided into five sections, for the five main countries of origin in this
migration: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico itself. Each section
contains portraits of migrants; first-person testimonies of the dead, often titled by the
precise locations where their bodies may be found; and poems that deploy varied
sources, including news stories and political and scientific reports, to give fuller context
to the human tales. The beginning and end of the book, and each of its five sections, are
framed by what Rodrigo calls a palimpsest: his altered passages from Bartolomé de las
Casas' classic cry of protest, situating the work within a broader Latin American story.
Poems from the English translation of Libro centroamericano have appeared in
Asymptote, Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets, and Poetry International.
Product Details
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Reviews
"[N]ewly born from death," these voices, these bodies,
refuse to vanish from the face of the earth. Fiercely lyrical,
burning with fury, these immigrants now live eternally in the
world, in us. Each voice is haunting, inerasable. Collectively, the
voices crash through false propagandas, rewrite what we call
history. Dan Bellm's translations are as intimate as whispered
conversations around a kitchen table. Balam Rodrigo's poetic
gifts are mind-blowing-I'm so thankful for his voice, which in
this singular book, ignites into a blazing chorus.
-Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning and
Guillotine
In Dan Bellm's meticulous rendering of Balam Rodrigo's
Central American Book of the Dead, the voices of the dead speak in
heartbreaking detail of the atrocities committed against them in
Mexico as they tried to reach the United States. But they also tell
of their dreams, their loves, their yearnings for the homelands
they've left behind. Each poem testifies not only to the
complicity of governments in the conditions that force migrants
to leave their homes, but also to the brutal colonial origins of the
violence they face in their journey to a better life. More than
testimony, each poem is a burial rite, Rodrigo's restoration of the
humanity of those murdered and abandoned. This book will
haunt you, as well it should.
-Rosa Alcalá, author of MyOTHER TONGUE
Balam Rodrigo transports readers across literary borders,
to a Latin American tradition in which poetry delivers
information-and emotion-silenced by the powerful. Central
American Book of the Dead leaves readers with images and stories
of life, death and overcoming that refuse to be buried beneath
the superficialities of what passes for "news." A book as daring
as the migrants who undertake the perilous journey north.
-Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting
Balam Rodrigo's Central American Book of the Dead is a
book that all non-Central Americans, especially Mexicans, should
read. The book is a retelling of Bartolomé de las Casas' A Brief
Account of the Destruction of the Indies, but remixed to show us that
the colonial machinery is still very much at work in the "fertile
burying ground called Mexico." With Dan Bellm's brilliant and
careful translation, the book becomes the very country where
these atrocities take place. It is the self-implicating account of
Mexico's violent history, written by a Mexican, that I've been
waiting for.
-Javier Zamora, author of Unaccompanied and Solito: A
Memoir
