Literary Amazonia

This remarkable selection of 20th-century Amazonian literature presents writing from the indigenous and mestizo people of the Amazon basin, recovering their forgotten voices for the Latin American literary canon. Most of these pieces - from 24 representative poets and 12 prose writers - are collected and translated into English here for the first time. Reflecting the editor's Pan-Amazonian vision, the book's organizational principle embraces the entire 7 million square kilometers of the Amazon basin as one imaginary space linked by myth, history, geography, and economy - not divided into arbitrary political regions. Most inhabitants live along the banks of the Amazon River or its more than 1,000 tributaries, the widespread water system that unifies the work of these writers. These poems, stories, and passages from novels not only include traditional themes of the indigenous groups but also illustrate the extraordinary multiculturalism of the region. Often the writing speaks through myths, such as the tale of the boto, the pink river dolphin capable of metamorphosis into human form, or the story of the beautiful woman who gave birth to the Amazon River with her inconsolable and torrential weeping.