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Specialty Publishing

WIW Member Exposes Readers to Lesser-Known Spanish Literature

Amanda Glensky and David Morgan, WIW Interns

C.M. Mayo is on a mission to expose English-speaking readers to the unique and vibrant voices of Mexican literature. Before she began sharing Mexican culture through her books, Mayo, a Texas native raised in Northern California and a long-time resident of Mexico, studied economics at the University of Chicago, worked at a Mexico City investment bank and taught finance at a private university.

She is a member of WIW and the founding editor of Tameme, a Spanish-English chapbook publisher that promotes English and Spanish translations of recently-published North American Works.

Mayo released her first travel memoir in 2002, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. Critics gave her rave reviews for her expressive elegance and eye-catching detail, with the Literary Journal considering it “one of the best books ever about Baja California.” Her first work, Sky over El Nido, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Mayo is currently promoting her latest book, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, an anthology of Mexican fiction and literary prose, released by Whereabouts Press in March 2006. Mayo spoke with WIW about her passion for sharing Mexican literature with an English-speaking audience.

“The Spanish language has a magnificent literary tradition, including what may be the greatest novel ever written, Don Quixote of La Mancha [by Miguel De Cervantes]. This tradition includes Mexican literature, of course, which includes the poetry of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz’s poems and essays, Carlos Fuentes’ powerful fiction, and the works of many, many others. It’s great stuff.”

In addition to its literary value, Mayo said she recommends Mexican writing because the United States and Mexico are connected by a nearly 2,000-mile-long border, and Mexico has become our biggest trading partner after China and Canada. She added that there are millions of Mexican and other Spanish-speaking immigrants in the United States, and numerous other Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens.

“Writing and literary translation is what I can do to help bring awareness,” Mayo said. While researching works to include in Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, she was surprised at how little of such a Mount Everest of magnificent writing was translated into English.

In preparation for this anthology, Mayo first selected pieces and then communicated with the writers or their publishers to get the permissions in order. She already knew the writer or translator in some cases.

“The commissioned original translations were another matter—there we had a lot of e-mails flying around. Everybody had to be happy with the final result,” she said.

Mayo advises editors interested in compiling an anthology to find a niche that has not yet been exploited. She recommended asking “Why does the world needs your particular anthology?” She also advises editors to budget as much as possible for permissions.

Writers interested in translating literature will have more fun and make a unique contribution by researching lesser-known authors, rather than celebrity authors that have already been widely translated, Mayo said. “Quality does not necessarily equate with fame—there are many outstanding Mexican writers and poets whose work has yet to be discovered by translators,” she said. “Invest a small amount of time in research and you will unearth treasures.”

Rather than a well-paying endeavor, she said that, “Literary translation really is a labor of love.”

Mayo had the idea to compile an anthology of translated Mexican literary writing while walking one day, she said. Shortly after, David Peattie of Whereabouts Press invited her to compile the Mexico book for his Traveler’s Literary Companion series.

“I had thought of doing a straightforward anthology, not of this kind, I mean, one that provides not only an introduction to the literary voices of the country, but also a portrait of the country itself,” she said. “I thought it was a brilliant concept.”

Mayo’s research for Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion deepened the sense she already had of Mexican literature’s complexity, richness and diversity, she said. Of her chosen articles, her favorite is the opening story by Daniel Reveles, “Big Caca’s Revenge.”

“It is so wickedly funny, and yet, as it asks us to examine a familiar situation from an unexpected point of view. Very poignant,” she said.

However, Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo’s “The Green Bottle,” translated by Geoff Hargreaves, was the story she most admired. “It’s a dirge of a story, very dark, but the construction of it is so intricate and yet harmonious. It seems to me to almost curl around itself, like a nautilus.”

Mayo is currently writing the last chapters of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, an epic novel of Mexico’s Second Empire. She is also editing the Tameme Chapbooks/Cuadernos, a bilingual (English/Spanish) chapbook series that can be found at www.tameme.org.

For more information on C.M. Mayo, visit www.cmmayo.com.