Voices from the Silence

The conquest, colonization, independence, the liberal reforms, the regimes, revolution, and dictatorships, the insurrections and ongoing peace dialogues all are combined in a narrative projecting the most important forces in Guatemalan history from the Mayan period to our own times. Using excerpts from poems, novels, stories, essays, and interviews by writers ranging from Cardoza y Aragn and Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias to the indigenous and testimonial voices of Rigoberta Mench and Mario Payeras, this full sampling of a countrys literature is, in truth, a documentary of realism and magic. Voices from the Silence bears witness to a nations long journey toward some ideal community for which so many have fought and died. Texts translated by Marc Zimmerman with the collaboration of Robert Scott Curry, Linda Thelma Campos, Preston Browning, Brad Stull, and Anne Woerhle.