The legend of El Q'anil, the "Man of Lightning," stands alongside such classic Maya literary artifacts as Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam but has been preserved only through the oral tradition of the Jakaltek Maya. In this tale, the young man Xhuwan Q'anil brings lightning to his people in order to save them from destruction. He undertakes a journey of adventure, participates in a great war, and is subsequently immortalized. It is a story that all Jakaltek children learn, one that reinforces their identity by showing that their people have a hero who lives in each Jakaltek Maya today. Víctor Montejo, who was raised in Maya culture and knows its lore intimately, compiled several versions of the legend in Guatemala during the height of paramilitary operations in that country in the 1980s. His contemporary reconstruction lovingly preserves this legend and reflects concern for the survival of Maya culture in the face of oppression. Just as the Maya people of western Guatemala continue to pray for peace at the sanctuary of Q'anil, the legend of the Man of Lightning affirms a culture's enduring traditions. In this edition, the text is presented in English, Spanish, and Jakaltek Maya to secure its deserved place in world literature.

Recovering Lost Footprints is the first full-length critical study to analyze Latin American Indigenous literary narratives in a systematic manner. In the book, Arturo Arias looks at Maya narratives in Guatemala. The study of these works is intended to spark changes so that constitutions recognize these cultures, their rights, their languages, their centers of worship, and their cosmologies. Through this study, Arias problematizes the partial or full omission of Latin America's original inhabitants from recognized citizenry. This book analyzes these elements of exclusion in the novelistic output of three salient figures, Luis de Lión, Gaspar Pedro González, and Víctor Montejo. The works by these writers offer evidence that most native people have entered modernity without renouncing their respective cultures or the specifics of their singular identities. The philosophical ethics elaborated in the texts, such as respect for nature and recognition of the holistic value of natural beings, enable non-Indigenous readers to both understand and relate to these values.

The Maya of the Yucatán have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). At the same time, they have contended with globalization pressures, first with hemp production and more recently with increased tourism and the fast-growing influence of American-based evangelical Protestantism. Despite these pressures to turn Maya into mestizo, the citizens of the small town of Maxcanú have used subtle forms of resistance—humor, satire, and language—to maintain aspects of their traditional identity. Loewe offers a contemporary look at a Maya community caught between tradition and modernity. He skilfully weaves the history of Mexico and this particular community into the analysis, offering a unique understanding of how one local community has faced the onslaught of modernization.

In Mayalogue, Native Mayan scholar Victor Montejo provides an alternative reading and interpretation of cultures, challenging Western ethnocentric approaches that have marginalized Native knowledge and worldviews in the past. He proposes instead a methodology for studying culture as a unified whole, a radical departure from the compartmentalized sections of knowledge recognized by Western scientific tradition. Offering a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies, with its terms and categories that have denigrated Indigenous cultures throughout the centuries, Montejo's postcolonial work aims to dismantle the colonialist construction of Indigenous cultures, giving way to a Native approach that balances insider and outsider descriptions of a particular culture. Developed from an Indigenous Maya perspective, Mayalogue is a contribution to the dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, students, and general audiences in the social sciences and humanities, and will be an essential text in decolonizing the minds of those who engage in the study of cultures anywhere in the world in the twenty-first century.

When Mayan leaders protested the celebration of the Quincentenary of the "discovery" of America and joined with other indigenous groups in the Americas to proclaim an alternate celebration of 500 years of resistance, they rose to national prominence in Guatemala. This was possible in part because of the cultural, political, economic, and religious revitalization that occurred in Mayan communities in the later half of the twentieth century. Another result of the revitalization was Mayan students' enrollment in graduate programs in order to reclaim the intellectual history of the brilliant Mayan past. Victor Montejo was one of those students. This is the first book to be published outside of Guatemala where a Mayan writer other than Rigoberta Menchu discusses the history and problems of the country. It collects essays Montejo has written over the past ten years that address three critical issues facing Mayan peoples today: identity, representation, and Mayan leadership. Montejo is deeply invested in furthering the discussion of the effectiveness of Mayan leadership because he believes that self-evaluation is necessary for the movement to advance. He also criticizes the racist treatment that Mayans experience, and advocates for the construction of a more pluralistic Guatemala that recognizes cultural diversity and abandons assimilation. This volume maps a new political alternative for the future of the movement that promotes inter-ethnic collaboration alongside a reverence for Mayan culture.

Challenging the distinctions between “old” and “new” media and narratives about the deprecation of orality in favor of inscribed forms, The Maya Art of Speaking Writing draws from Maya concepts of tz’ib’ (recorded knowledge) and tzij, choloj, and ch’owen (orality) to look at expressive work across media and languages. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in the Guatemalan highlands, Tiffany D. Creegan Miller discusses images that are sonic, pictorial, gestural, and alphabetic. She reveals various forms of creativity and agency that are woven through a rich media landscape in Indigenous Guatemala, as well as Maya diasporas in Mexico and the United States. Miller discusses how technologies of inscription and their mediations are shaped by human editors, translators, communities, and audiences, as well as by voices from the natural world. These texts push back not just on linear and compartmentalized Western notions of media but also on the idea of the singular author, creator, scholar, or artist removed from their environment. The persistence of orality and the interweaving of media forms combine to offer a challenge to audiences to participate in decolonial actions through language preservation. The Maya Art of Speaking Writing calls for centering Indigenous epistemologies by doing research in and through Indigenous languages as we engage in debates surrounding Indigenous literatures, anthropology, decoloniality, media studies, orality, and the digital humanities.