The Girl from Chimel - Hardcover

Rigoberta Menchu Tum won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. She lives in Guatemala and devotes herself to fighting for the rights of Maya Guatemalans and other First Nations in the Americas as head of the Fundacion Rigoberta Menchu Tum. She has received numerous international awards and honorary degrees and has also written Crossing Boarders: An Autobiography, I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala; as well as two books for younger readers - The Girl from Chimel and The Honey Jar, both illustrated by Domi and published by Groundwood Books. The Secret Legacy is co-authored with Dante Liano, an eminent, award-winning Guatemalan writer who now lives in Milan.

David Unger received Guatemala’s 2014 Miguel Angel Asturias National Prize in Literature for lifetime achievement, though he writes exclusively in English and lives in the US. The Mastermind (Akashic Books, 2016), his latest novel, has been translated into Spanish, Arabic and Italian. In 2011 he published The Price of Escape (Akashic Books) and Para Mi, Eres Divina (Random House Mondadori, Mexico). Other books include Ni chicha, ni limonada (F y G Editores, 2009) and Life in the Damn Tropics (Wisconsin University Press, 2004). His short stories and essays have appeared in Delta de las arenas: cuentos árabes, cuentos judíos (Literal Publishers, 2013), Puertos Abiertos (FCE, 2011), Guernica Magazine (February 2016, April 2011, November 2007 and August 2006) and Playboy Mexico (October 2005). He has translated 14 titles including Popol Vuh, Guatemala’s pre-Columbian creation myth, and the work of Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala), Silvia Molina (Mexico), Nicanor Parra (Chile), Teresa Cárdenas (Cuba) and Mario Benedetti (Uruguay), among others.

Dante Liano is an eminent Guatemalan writer and National Literature Award laureate. He currently lives in Milan, where he teaches Latin American literature. He is the author of The Man from Montserrat, The San Andres Mystery and co-authored of The Girl from Chimel. Domi's wonderful illustrations appear in many children's books, including the Napí titles by Antonio Ramírez; The Night the Moon Fell (La noche que se cayó la luna) and The Race of Toad and Deer (La carrera del sapo y el venado) by Pat Mora; The Girl from Chimel, The Honey Jar and The Secret Legacy by Rigoberta Menchú; and The Story of Colors by Zapatista hero Sub-Comandante Marcos. Domi is Mazateca and grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Gr. 4-7. Maya activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Menchu, with assistance from Guatemalan National Literature laureate Liano, offers a memoir of her girlhood in the Indian village of Chimel, in Guatemala. Each short chapter tells a story that adds to the broadening picture of history of the village and the everyday life and beliefs of its people. An early story tells of the writer's grandfather literally sweeping his intended bride off her feet and carrying her away to start a new village. Another anecdote provides vivid sensory details of an afternoon spent picking and eating forbidden blackberries, while still another gives a straightforward description of and the meaning behind the traditional practice of burning a baby's umbilical cord and the mother's placenta.^B Created with strong, primitive forms and vibrant colors, full-page oil paintings brighten half the double-page spreads and provide memorable scenes of Chimel through three generations. Providing a rare firsthand account of Guatemalan village life, this translated book is a good choice for students curious about the Maya as well as those seeking to complete the perennial memoir assignment. Carolyn Phelan
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