The First Tortilla: A Bilingual Story

The First Tortilla: A Bilingual Story
Author: Rudolfo Anaya
Illustrator: Amy Cordova
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN-10: 0826342140

Rudolfo Anaya, author of one of my all-time favorite books, Bless Me Ultima has written a magical and lovely folktale about the origins of that of us Mexicanos/Chicanos, the delicious tortilla. The First Tortilla is the story of Jade, an indigenous girl that lives in a small village near a volcano. Her village has been suffering through a drought and all their squash and bean plants are dying. Jade prays to the Mountain Spirit to bring rain so that the precious plants will live and her village won’t go hungry.

As Jade works in the garden, a blue hummingbird brings a message to go find the Mountain Spirit and ask for rain. Without a question for her safety Jade sets off, braving the volcano and follows the hummingbird to the very top where she meets the Mountain Spirit. She offers the spirit food made by her own hand and he is so pleased with it that he gives her the gift of corn which the ants have in a cave.

Jade tastes the corn and finds it to be sweet and delicious. She takes it back to the village and plants it. As the prayed for rain comes, the corn grows alongside beans, squash and chiles. Jade grinds the harvested dried corn, adds water and makes masa. She puts it on a comal or griddle and the smell soon permeates the village. Her parents taste it and find the corn tortilla to be wonderful. Soon Jade is teaching everyone how to make the tortillas and the people have a new staple.

I loved this story. It has elements of old Aztec legends like the ants in the cave with the corn. It gives a feel to how important water was and is to people. It tells how water was so important that people would move from a village if there was no rain. Children will get a sense of the importance of the tortilla as a staple.

Amy Cordova’s rich and colorful illustrations give a beautiful insight into the village life. Her depcitions of those beautiful indigenous faces are just amazing and give children a sense of how they lived and dressed.

I loved how the hummingbird, such an important figure in Aztec mythology was incorporate into the tale. This book is bilingual and the translation by Enrique R. Lamadrid is smooth and almost effortless. The book is recommended for ages 9-12 but I think children of pre-school age will love this book just as much. The bright colors and stunning illustrations are sure to capture their eyes and interest as much as the story read to them will capture their imagination and heart. Highly recommended.


Book Description from the publisher:

The First Tortilla is a moving, bilingual story of courage and discovery. A small Mexican village is near starvation. There is no rain, and the bean and squash plants are dying.

Jade, a young village girl, is told by a blue hummingbird to take a gift to the Mountain Spirit. Then it will send the needed rain.

Burning lava threatens her, but Jade reaches the top of the volcano. The Mountain Spirit is pleased. It allows the ants in a nearby cave to share their corn with Jade. The corn was sweet and delicious and Jade took some back to save the village.

Jade grinds the dry corn, adds water, and makes dough. She pats the masa and places it on hot stones near the fire. She has made the first tortilla. Soon the making of corn tortillas spreads throughout Mexico and beyond.

Reading level: grade 3 and up

The story of a young Mexican girl who saves her village by making the first tortilla with the help of the Mountain Spirit.

About the Author
Rudolfo Anaya, widely acclaimed as one of the founders of modern Chicano literature, is professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. Anaya was presented with the National Medal of Arts for literature in 2001 and his novel Alburquerque (the city's original Spanish spelling) won the PEN Center West Award for Fiction. He is best known for the classic Bless Me Ultima. Amy Córdova is an instructor for the Taos Institute of Arts, Taos, New Mexico. She wrote and illustrated Abuelita’s Heart. Enrique R. Lamadrid is professor of Spanish folklore and literature at the University of New Mexico. In 2005, he was awarded the Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society in recognition of his work as a cultural activist.

All the Stars in the Sky: Native Stories of the Heavens

All the Stars in the Sky: Native Stories from the Heavens
Author: C.J. Taylor
Publisher: Tundra Books
ISBN-10: 0887767591
ISBN-13: 978-0887767593


All the Stars in the Sky is a beautiful book. I’m always a big fan of collections of old folktales, myths and legends, especially when they come from the Americas because there was so much that was lost. Anything reclaimed or re-told is good in my mind. We need our culture and our history. I believe it’s vital. In this book, the author draws on many traditions and their legends inspired by the skies. Each is beautifully told as well as gorgeously illustrated.

I loved the legend of the Old Man and the Sun’s magical leggings. It was witty and funny. The sweeping illustrations in bright sun-colored tones really added depth to both the story and the humor. The illustration of Old Man sitting in the lake to cool himself off after misfiring the leggings arrows of flames was just too great. I laughed and laughed at that one.

Every time we save a legend from our indigenous past, we honor our ancestors. Every time we tell a story from our ancestors, we teach a history lesson to our children. Each story is a pearl of culture, of tradition and fosters both understanding and pride. Our children need these foundations to stand upon. This book is a prayer, an offering to the ancestors. I encourage everyone to buy it, not just those of us who are indigenous. Children will love the stories as will adults. Highly recommended!


About the Author:
C.J. Taylor is an internationally acclaimed artist and children’s author of Mohawk heritage. She has traveled extensively throughout North America helping make the rich cultural history of native people accessible to the young. Her paintings are in many private collections across Canada and the US. She is a self-taught artist and storyteller who has organized exhibitions of Native art across North America. All the Stars in the Sky is C.J. Taylor’s eleventh book. She lives in B.C.

ABOUT THIS BOOK (from the publisher)
________________________________________
The heavens — the sun, the stars, and the moon — have inspired, intrigued, and mystified us from the beginning of time. We’ve always searched for ways to comprehend their beauty and their meaning. Mohawk artist and author C. J. Taylor has drawn from First Nations legends from across North America to present a fascinating collection of stories inspired by the night skies.

The legends — Salish, Onondaga, Blackfoot, Netsilik (Inuit), Wasco, Ojibwa, and Cherokee — are by turns funny, beautiful, tragic, and frightening, but each one is infused with a sense of awe.

From the Ojibwa legend of the great hunter, White Hawk, and his love for an unattainable maiden, or the Salish legend of a magical lake that is threatened when human beings turn greedy and lose their respect for its gifts and for the sun’s power, to the delightful Cherokee legend of Grandmother Spider who brought light to the world, this is an important collection that is enhanced by Taylor’s glorious paintings.

Kiki's Journey

Kiki’s Journey
Author: Kristi Orona-Ramirez
Illustrator: Jonathan Warm Day
Publisher: Children’s Book Press
ISBN: 0892392142


Kiki’s Journey is the story of Kiki, a Tiwa girl who lives in Los Angeles far away from the reservation in Taos, New Mexico where here family is from. She is angry and embarrassed when everyone she meets assumes that because she is Tiwa, she knows everything about Native Americans in general. She hates it.

Then Kiki’s family goes on a journey back to Taos to visit family for vacation. She hasn’t been there since she was a baby. The trip home to the Pueblo becomes not just a vacation, but an inner journey for Kiki as she learns about the Pueblo and her family. With her grandmother’s help, she learns of her heritage, the village she was born in and her history. She finds a way to accept the path her life has taken and to be proud of where she came from.

The story is a beautiful one, filled with prayers to the Creator, bits and pieces of Native American life and lore. It touches a part of so many of us that have mixed heritages or that live far away from where we came from. I think that both children and adults will find it resonates.

Each illustration by Jonathan Warm Day compliments the story and gives it even more warmth. His illustrations of the desert and the adobe buildings in the village are particularly stunning and rich. My favorite illustration is the one where Kiki and her mother are praying to the Creator and the wind is streaming through their hair. It’s a beautiful and elemental piece. The feeling of love in the family is strong and persists throughout the book.

About the Author:
Kristy Orona-Ramirez (Taos Pueblo/Tarahuamara) is a writer and fourth grade teacher. She is also a lead singer and songwriter for the Native American Northern drumming group, The Mankillers.

About the Illustrator:
Jonathan Warm Day (Taos Pueblo) is a well-known artist and writer who grew up on the Taos Pueblo Indian Reservation. He currently resides there with his daughters.

The Painted Drum

Faye Travers, an estate antiquities expert is startled to hear the sound of a drum as she is cataloging the contents of a house. She follows the sound and finds an Ojibwe painted drum carefully wrapped in a blanket. Moved by the feelings the sound and sight of the drum bring to her, she secrets it away and steals it.

As Louise Erdrich’s masterful storytelling unfolds, the drum too unfolds coming to life as the stories of the lives the drum has touched almost weave themselves into the rich and elegiac tale.

We follow Faye as she deals with her grief in losing her sister and father. She has an oddly touching yet reserved relationship with her lover, the sculptor Kurt Krahe that lives nearby. Her tentative and careful relationship with her mother slowly blossoms into something other as the drum works its magic and brings them to the drum’s home, the Ojibwe reservation and home of her grandmother.

When Faye talks of the frozen and dying apple orchard or of the ravens she loves to watch, I can see and smell the desiccated branches. I hear the ravens call.

The drum sings its song of grief and loss, of the children who died, of the children it saves. The drum and the story are magical, the language of both so elegant, so poignant, so warm.

The Story of Colors - Highly Recommended

This book is a wonderful folktale from the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico. The original text is taken from the communiqué dated October 27, 1994 from Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos to the Mexican People. Originally published in Mexico with illustrations by Domitila Domínguez as La Historia de los Colores © 1996 by Colectivo Callejero, Guadalajara.

The amazing thing about this book is the controversy it caused. On March 9, 1999, the National Endowment for the Arts revoked the funding for the book. This was a clear instance of the NEA revoking funding for issues dealing with cultural diversity. Cinco Puntos Press fought to publish and distribute this book. You can read more about Cinco Puntos’ fight for this book by visiting their website:

http://www.cincopuntos.com/storyofcolors.ssd


Told by Subcommandante Marcos, who is the spokesperson for the indigenous army currently at war with the Mexican Government, The Story of Colors is a lovely little folktale written with such virtuosity, that you can imagine sitting at Don Antonio's feet and hear his voice as he tells how colors came to the world. Marcos is known for being a wonderful storyteller and he is at is best in this amazing story of the Colors. The illustrations by Domitilla Dominguez who is indigenous from Oaxaca are beautiful and quite stunning. They perfectly compliment the story and give a fantastic feel to the book. This book is a treasure in many ways. For me, the biggest pleasure of this book is knowing how it was almost kept from us.

Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez

A week ago, I finished Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez for the second time in five years. The book is an epic story spanning three generations of women from two families, one rich and the other poor. It is more than just the story of these two families, it is the story of the brutal massacre of indigenous people, the story of the conflict and bloody history of El Salvador, the battles of rich and poor, of tradition , against so called progress.

The women in this story are strong, determined, vibrant survivors. There is love here between mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. There is betrayal and anguish, the loss of children, loss of life, loss of a way of life. Ms. Benitez speaks eloquently of El Salvador’s beauty and the brutality against the indigenous. I ached when I read of the massacre. I cried bitter tears when the melodic language of the Pipil was silenced and when I read that they had given up their beautiful rainbows of color in their indigenous dress so as not to attract the attention and brutality of the Guardia.

At times, this book was so brutal in it’s truth; the violence and death were so senseless that I had to put it down for a day or two just to get past it. I wanted to hate the rich family that made their money on the backs of indigenous workers picking their coffee, working their fields but Ms. Benitez made them so human, so likeable that it was hard to find a villain. I sympathized and agonized with both. I wanted to stop things, make them see the inevitable disaster and got so involved with the story that I felt I was there. To be so involved in a book is a blessing no matter how hard the subject matter. Sandra Benitez is such a wonderful storyteller that for the days I read this book and long after, it absorbed me and changed me. It made me think. It made me want more. It made me educate myself more about El Salvador and its history.

How many books can do that? How many books can you retain so much of for such a long time? The second reading was just as hard to digest. Brutality, violence, terror, war and injustice aren’t meant to be easy. It is, after all these years just as hauntingly beautiful as when I first read it. Maybe more so now than before. I remain torn between the families, torn by the violence and injustice, want to work harder than ever for social change, for promoting peace and tolerance, more motivated than ever to protect my culture, my native language, the costumes my family wears for our Aztec dances, our traditions. I don’t know what else I can say about this book other than to encourage everyone to read it. It’s not some new buzz book – the publication date on my old copy is 1998 but look it up, buy it, borrow it, read it. Don’t leave it in the darkness of some old library shelf. It deserves much better.

Shadows of Tender Fury

This is the first collection of letters and communiqués by Subcomandante Marcos, that mysterious masked spokesperson of the Zapatista Rebellion. These communiqués were published first in La Jornada, the Mexican daily newspaper. The communiqués are meant to educate the masses to the plight of the indigeous people Chiapas.

The book contains the first four declarations of the Lancandon Jungle and the credo of the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional) or the Zapatista National Liberation Army. I feel that the first paragraph from the First Declaration, written in January of 1994, gives a great feel for what the book contains and says it all in a nutshell.


From the First Declaration of the Lancandon Jungle
The EZLN’s Declaration of War:

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO:
MEXICAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS:

We are a product of 500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain led by insurgents, then to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the French empire from our soil, and later the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz denied us the just application of the Reform laws and the people rebelled and leaders like Villa and Zapata emerged, poor men just like us. We have been denied the most elemental preparation so they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don't care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children.

But today, we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

This book is even more pertinent and necessary now in 2005 then in 1994. We have become jaded and less informed about the struggle in Mexico. How many people realize that still the Zapatistas fight on? With the war in Iraq, the tsunami in Thailand and other world events in the past few years, we are forgetting the struggles in Mexico, so close to home. These are our people, this is our fight. Read Marco’s books, all of them but start with this one. If you’ve read it, read it again. Refresh your memory and get out there and help in the fight.