An engrossing and evocative quest into Mexico's past, to uncover the story of the legendary Amerindian woman who became translator and concubine to Cortes in the Spanish Conquest.

The complicated life of the real woman who came to be known as La Malinche.

Lanyon looks at the absorbing and fascinating life of Cortes--the illegitimate son of a conquistador and an indigenous American woman--who lived grandly and suffered greatly in the new and old worlds of 16th century Spain.

The first major visual and cultural exploration of the legacy of La Malinche, simultaneously reviled as a traitor to her people and hailed as the mother of Mexico An enslaved Indigenous girl who became Hernán Cortés's interpreter and cultural translator, Malinche stood at center stage in one of the most significant events of modern history. Linguistically gifted, she played a key role in the transactions, negotiations, and conflicts between the Spanish and the Indigenous populations of Mexico that shaped the course of global politics for centuries to come. As mother to Cortés's firstborn son, she became the symbolic progenitor of a modern Mexican nation and a heroine to Chicana and Mexicana artists. Traitor, Survivor, Icon is the first major publication to present a comprehensive visual exploration of Malinche's enduring impact on communities living on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Five hundred years after her death, her image and legacy remain relevant to conversations around female empowerment, indigeneity, and national identity throughout the Americas. This lavish book establishes and examines her symbolic import and the ways in which artists, scholars, and activists through time have appropriated her image to interpret and express their own experiences and agendas from the 1500s through today.

An extraordinary retelling of the passionate and tragic love between the conquistador Cortez and the Indian woman Malinalli, his interpreter during his conquest of the Aztecs. Malinalli's Indian tribe has been conquered by the warrior Aztecs. When her father is killed in battle, she is raised by her wisewoman grandmother who imparts to her the knowledge that their founding forefather god, Quetzalcoatl, had abandoned them after being made drunk by a trickster god and committing incest with his sister. But he was determined to return with the rising sun and save her tribe from their present captivity. Wheh Malinalli meets Cortez she, like many, suspects that he is the returning Quetzalcoatl, and assumes her task is to welcome him and help him destroy the Aztec empire and free her people. The two fall passionately in love, but Malinalli gradually comes to realize that Cortez's thirst for conquest is all too human, and that for gold and power, he is willing to destroy anyone, even his own men, even their own love.

Feminism, Nation and Myth explores the scholarship of La Malinche, the indigenous woman who is said to have led Cortés and his troops to the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán. The figure of La Malinche has generated intense debate among literature and cultural studies scholars. Drawing from the humanities and the social sciences, feminist studies, queer studies, Chicana/o studies, and Latina/o studies, critics and theorists in this volume analyze the interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender. Studies of La Malinche demand that scholars disassemble and reconstruct concepts of nation, community, agency, subjectivity, and social activism. This volume originated in the 1999 "U.S. Latina/Latino Perspectives on la Malinche" conference that brought together scholars from across the nation. Filmmaker Dan Banda interviewed many of the presenters for his documentary, Indigenous Always: The Legend of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico. Contributors include Alfred Arteaga, Antonia Castañeda, Debra Castillo, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Deena González, María Herrera Sobek, Guisela Latorre, Luis Leal, Sandra Messinger Cypess, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Amanda Nolacea Harris, Rolando J. Romero, and Tere Romo. These academic essays are complemented by the creative work of Alicia Gaspar de Alba and José Emilio Pacheco, both of whom evoke the figure of La Malinche in their work.

A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.