How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems

Poetry

How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems

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The latest in the Seedbank series, the debut in English of a groundbreaking Indigenous poet of the Americas.
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The latest in the Seedbank series, the debut in English of a groundbreaking Indigenous poet of the Americas.

In a fiercely personal yet authoritative voice, prolific contemporary poet Mikeas Sánchez explores the worldview of the Zoque people of southern Mexico. Her paced, steely lyrics fuse cosmology, lineage, feminism, and environmental activism into a singular body of work that stands for the self and the collective in the same instant. “I am woman and I celebrate every vein,” she writes, “where I guard my ancestors’ secrets / every Zoque man’s word in my mouth / every Zoque woman’s wisdom in my spit.”

How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems examines the intersection of Zoque struggles against colonialism and empire, and those of North African immigrants and refugees. Sánchez encountered the latter in Barcelona as a revelation, “spreading their white blankets on the ground / as if they’ll soon return to sea / flying the sail of the promised land / the land that became a mirage.” Other works bring us just as close to similarly imperiled relatives, ancestors, gods, and archetypal Zoque men and women that Sánchez addresses with both deeply prophetic and childlike love.

Coming from the only woman to ever publish a book of poetry in Zoque and Spanish, this timely, powerful collection pairs the bilingual originals with an English translation for the first time. This book is for anyone interested in poetry as knowledge, proclaimed with both feet squarely set on ancient ground.

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Keywords: 
poetry, woman poet, trilingual, bilingual, English, Spanish, Zoque, mexico, Chiapas, Indigenous, translated, identity, immersion, internationalism, activism, community, communal, feminism, feminist poet, Ecology, environmentalism, Indigenous rights, Indigenous autonomy
ISBN:
9781639550203
Publish Date: 
12/12/2023
Pages: 
208
Size: 
8.5 × 6.5 × 1 in
Weight: 
15 oz
Author

Mikeas Sánchez is the author of How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems. She is one of the most important poets of the Indigenous Americas, working in Zoque, a language spoken in southern Mexico. 

Translator

Wendy Call is co-editor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide and Best Literary Translations, author of the award-winning No Word for Welcome, and translator of two collections of poetry by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda. 

Translator

Shook is a poet, translator, and editor whose work has spanned a wide range of languages and places.

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