By Thania Muñoz Davaslioglu and Fabio Chee Madrigal
For this issue we had the alegría of collaborating with a committee composed of poets, scholars, and writers. Their call for submissions ignited this issue’s sample of poetry, prose, and essays about and in American indigenous languages, and we have the fortuna of representing Pa Ipai, Tu´un Sávi, Tseltal, and Dizhsa. Some of these texts delve into nostalgia and pain for places, identity, people, languages, food, and motherhood. With this sentence we do not want to pretend to summarize this issue’s content. But, we do happily invite you, to read the essay “Gastronomía guerrerense en la ruta de San Francisco” by Kau Sirenio Pioquinto and Martina Rojas Nava’s “Corona de Cristo,” for example, and ask yourself how the concept of home can be found in these two texts from apparent disparate topics. At the same time, we do not premise this issue as one of connections between texts. We invite you to explore it and to tell us, tweet us, your reaction after reading the poem “Ndumūi” by Rosa Maqueda Vicente, or share with us what you know about the Zapotec community in Los Angeles in response to Janet Martinez’s essay, “Zapotec Resilience: Finding Belonging In Community.” Our hope is, as in every issue, as the parquecito we propose to be, to be a place of cultural gathering and exchange; so, we await for you to tell us qué les pareció este issue.
In Latin@ Literatures we have always placed value on our communities’ linguistic diversity and we have strived to make it a focus of our content. With this issue we continue to pursue this goal. We are not only hoping to decenter English in the field of Latinx studies, but also Spanish. Not all the texts are in English, or Spanish. And, as tradition, we do not translate Spanish nor English. Thus, this is also an invitation to translation. This was not entirely by editorial choice, as the authors’ contributions also provide similar challenges. We trust that reading Juana Inés Reza Albañez’s textos in Pa Ipai along Adelaida Albañez Arballo’s traducciones en Español may incite a new collaboration to translate them to English and other languages. As non-speakers of the multiple indigenous languages represented in this issue, we delegated our positions to the sidelines and we offer our immense gratitude to the authors. Their voices and vision live beyond the margins of our journal and emphasize the vitality of our indigenous languages in the Americas, in the past, present, and future.
This special issue granted us the opportunity to collaborate with other scholars and writers beyond our fields of study and geographies. Luis Felipe Lomelí and Ignacio Carvajal, desde Kansas, offered us their curiosity, their excitement to read about the border, immigration, and identity from otras perspectivas. Florentino Solano, desde México, shared with us his expertise as ñuu savi poet. We appreciate their time and hope we can continue to collaborate with other writers, artists, and scholars in future Special Issues. Let us know. Lxs invitamos.
Dr. Thania Muñoz Davaslioglu is an Assistant Professor of Spanish, Latin American and Latina/o studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and Managing Editor & Founder of Latin@ Literatures.
Dr. Fabio Chee Madrigal is a Poet and Chicanx Scholar, and the Design Editor & Founder of Latin@ Literatures.