Mesoamerican Voices: Native Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Yucatan, and Guatemala

Mesoamerican Voices, first published in 2006, presents a collection of indigenous-language writings from the colonial period, translated into English. The texts were written from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries by Nahuas from central Mexico, Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Maya from Yucatan, and other groups from Mexico and Guatemala. The volume gives college teachers and students access to important new sources for the history of Latin America and Native Americans. It is the first collection to present the translated writings of so many native groups and to address such a variety of topics, including conquest, government, land, household, society, gender, religion, writing, law, crime, and morality.

Table of Contents:
Part I: 1. Mesoamericans and Spaniards in the sixteenth century; 2. Literacy in colonial Mesoamerica; Part II: 3. Views of the conquest; 4. Political life; 5. Household and land; 6. Society and gender; 7. Crime and punishment; 8. Religious life; 9. Rhetoric and moral philosophy.

About the Author :
Matthew Restall is Associate Professor of Latin American History at Pennsylvania State University. Since 1995 he is author of thirty articles and essays and six books, including The Maya World (1997) and Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003). Lisa Sousa is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She co-edited and translated The Story of Guadalupe (1998), with James Lockard and Staffor Poole, and is author of numerous articles on society and culture in colonial Mexico. Kevin Terraciano is Associate Professor of Latin American History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca (2001).

Review :
"[This new valuable addition] to the growing corpus of indigenous voices from Mesoamerica will find a welcome home on the research desk, the teaching podium and the student's bookshelves, as we strive together to understand the meaning of the changes and continuities in native people's lives within the Spanish colonial framework." - Stephanie Wood, University of Oregon