The Mexican Dream

The Mexican Dream PDF Author: J. M. G. Le Clézio
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226110028
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
A widely respected French novelist with a long history of interest in pre-Columbian Mexico, Le Clezio imagined how the thought of early Indian civilizations might have evolved if not for the interruption of European conquest. A powerful evocation of the imaginings that made and unmade an ancient culture. Map.

The Mexican Dream

The Mexican Dream PDF Author: J. M. G. Le Clézio
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226110028
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
A widely respected French novelist with a long history of interest in pre-Columbian Mexico, Le Clezio imagined how the thought of early Indian civilizations might have evolved if not for the interruption of European conquest. A powerful evocation of the imaginings that made and unmade an ancient culture. Map.

The Mexican Dream, Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

The Mexican Dream, Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations PDF Author: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indian philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description


Corn Woman Sings

Corn Woman Sings PDF Author: Barron Eleanor Druckrey, PhD
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595463436
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Do you want to know?" the spirit asked twenty-three-year-old Eleanor Barrón Druckrey in 1967. At the time, the young woman was not quite ready. Ten years later and still stalked by spirits day and night, Barrón Druckrey accepted the invitation to embark on a journey of discovery through her dreams. She began to understand a pattern of brilliance and beauty related to the ancient past when magic, wonder, and awe reigned throughout the native cultures in the Americas. Drawn from more than thirty years of recorded dreams, Corn Woman Sings brings Native American traditions to life. Interwoven with Barrón Druckrey's personal stories and discussions on the legends of the great dreamers, Corn Woman's legacy lays a path of transformation and renewal for the modern-day curandera, medicine woman and mystic, in all walks of life. Corn Woman Sings shows you how to start building a dream map that will lead you to personal transformation. It illustrates the process of opening up to your inner self and starting the process of uniting mind, body, and spirit. Only time will tell what you might witness in your dreams.

Deadly Baggage

Deadly Baggage PDF Author: Al Sandine
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786497009
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1519, a few hundred Europeans led by Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba to the Mexican mainland, where they encountered representatives of the Aztec Empire. Their Iberian history, culture and religion, and their experience in the Greater Antilles made conquest and riches the aim of these adventurers. They regarded themselves as heroes in a romantic crusade of good against evil. Each member of the expedition sought to acquire precious metals and to become a lord of enslaved native labor. Their horses and steel swords, aided by native disunity and susceptibility to Old World diseases, ensured their success. This analysis of the conquest of Mexico stands in contrast to previous narratives that either reduce the conquest to a contest between Cortes and Montezuma, or describe a near miraculous victory of European ingenuity and Western values over Indian superstition and savagery. The author re-frames the clash of civilizations in New World prehistory that left inhabitants at a disadvantage.

India: A Civilization of Differences

India: A Civilization of Differences PDF Author: Alain Daniélou
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620550326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of Daniélou's writings that builds a bold and cogent defense of India's caste system • Looks at the Hindu caste system not as racist inequality but as a natural ordering of diversity • Reveals the stereotypes of Indian society invented to justify colonialism • Includes never-before-published articles by the internationally recognized Hindu scholar and translator of The Complete Kama Sutra (200,000 copies sold) In classical India social ethics are based on each individual's functional role in society. These ethics vary according to caste in order to maximize the individual's effectiveness in the social context. This is the definition of caste ethics. The Indian caste system is not a hierarchy with some who are privileged and others who are despised; it is a natural ordering, an organizing principle, of a society wherein differences are embraced rather than ignored. In the caste system it is up to the individual to achieve perfection in the state to which he or she is born, since to a certain extent that state also forms part of a person's nature. All people must accomplish their individual spiritual destinies while, as members of a social group, ensuring the continuity of the group and collaborating in creating a favorable framework for all human life--thereby fulfilling the collective destiny of the group. The notion of transmigration provides an equalizing effect on this prescribed system in that today's prince may be reborn as a woodcutter and the Brahman as a shoemaker. In India: A Civilization of Differences, Daniélou explores this seldom-heard side of the caste debate and argues effectively in its favor. This rare collection of the late author's writings contains several never-before-published articles and offers an in-depth look at the structure of Indian society before and after Western colonialism.

Latin American Postmodernisms

Latin American Postmodernisms PDF Author: Young
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004647511
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first essays in this volume locate Latin America within the postmodernism debate by addressing both its position in the theory of the postmodern and the peripheral existence of the continent in light of the globalizing practices of the contemporary world. The next essays focus on the Caribbean and elements of the formation of identity and culture in a group of societies belonging to the same geographic region but confronted with the idiosyncrasies of their colonial histories, the problematics of race and language, and their relation to the politics and cultures of metropolitan powers. There are three essays concerned with re-readings of the first encounters between Europe and America and discussions of more recent fictional representations of the past which attempt to recover the lost Amerindian Other of the Conquest and Colonization and to reveal the constructedness of History. Finally, preceded by two texts on ways of reading and writing in Latin America, the final four essays are concerned with challenges to the discourses of power by Latin American women who re-define the subject and counter the established hegemonies of religion, culture, and social structure both in their writing and political actions. As a collection of essays, this volume will appeal to readers who are interested in Post-modernism as a global phenomenon and in understanding the different forms it takes and the issues it addresses in different cultural environments.

What If Latin America Ruled the World?

What If Latin America Ruled the World? PDF Author: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608192725
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Get Book Here

Book Description
This tour of the histories of North and South America explains how Latin America has become a vital part of the global community and discusses how its consumers, resources and emigrants will become big factors in the future.

Return of the Plumed Serpent

Return of the Plumed Serpent PDF Author: Graham Hancock
Publisher: Coronet
ISBN: 1444788388
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 544

Get Book Here

Book Description
Graham Hancock, an expert in ancient civilisations and author of the 9 million selling Fingerprints of the Gods, and expert too, on the use of hallucinogens to achieve higher states of consciousness, brings these two interests together in the second volume of the War God trilogy. The conquistador Hernán Cortés is dreaming of Tenochtitlan, the golden city of Aztecs. But in order to win the Aztecs' gold, Cortés and his small force of just five hundred men will have to defeat the psychotic emperor Moctezuma and the armies of hundreds of thousands he commands. Cortés expects that the Tlascalans, hereditary enemies of the Aztecs, will join him, but instead finds himself locked in a deadly struggle. As Cortés risks all against the Tlascalans, he plays mind games with Moctezuma, aiming to defeat the Aztec emperor psychologically before ever having to face him in battle. In this he is aided by his lover Malinal, a beautiful Mayan princess. It is from Malinal that Cortés learns of the myth of Quetzalcoatl, 'The Plumed Serpent'. She shows him how to exploit the prophecy of the fabled god king's return to weaken Moctezuma's resolve and keep alive the suspicion that the conquistador might actually be Quetzalcoatl himself.

Legends of the Plumed Serpent

Legends of the Plumed Serpent PDF Author: Neil Baldwin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610392698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description
Meticulously pieced together from personal experiences that come with years of travel, an extensive knowledge of the historic and scholarly works, and a deep appreciation of Latin American art and culture—both ancient and modern—critically-acclaimed biographer Neil Baldwin has created a mosaic of words and images retelling the myth of the Plumed Serpent (or Quetzalcóatl) as it has evolved through the millennia. He has also created an essential guidebook for the armchair traveller and passionate tourist alike. Only a few hours by air from the United States are the mysteries and hauntingly beautiful ruins of Mexico. Among the vines intertwined in the frail latticework of crumbling palaces, spiraling geometric motifs covering vast walls that sink beneath the jungle, and nearly vertical temple steps leading hundreds of feet to a dizzying view of sky and earth, images of Quetzalcóatl abound. The fanged, bug-eyed feathered serpent thrusts his malevolent, sneering head from the pyramid at Teotihuacán; he swims in a river of rock around the temple at Xochicalco; and at Chichén Itzá, serpent and jaguar dance on a trail of stone, their embrace spawning a monstrous snake with clawed forefeet. Depicted as part man, snake, and bird, the Plumed Serpent is the earliest known creation myth from Mesoamerica, the region spanning Mexico and most of Central America. He embodies good and evil, sky and earth, feast and famine—the duality of life itself. Steep, massive temples were built in his honor at Teotihuacán, the vast city of ruins near today’s Mexico City, and at Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatán, the intricate complex that includes the famed ballcourt. Moctezuma, the ruler of the Aztecs, mistook Hernán Cortéz and the invasion of the Spanish in 1519 for the return of Quetzalcóatl. The Catholic Church with its army of Franciscan monks adapted his legend to introduce the indigenous people to Catholicism. The myth enhanced Emiliano Zapata’s stature as a latter-day Quetzalcóatl during the Mexican Revolution. Diego Rivera and the modern muralists invoked his image to include indigenous themes in their state-sponsored art. And Quetzalcóatl inspired English author D. H. Lawrence to write a new “American novel.” These and many other tales are recounted in the words and images of Neil Baldwin’s Legends of the Plumed Serpent. Whether sharing a moment of reflection among the breathtaking ruins, delving into the historic role of Quetzalcóatl during the Spanish Conquest, or tracing the themes of revolution and rebirth in the art of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, Neil Baldwin’s enlightening prose captures the imagination. Accompanied by numerous illustrations—many photographs taken by the author, and others painstakingly researched and gathered over the past decade—Legends of the Plumed Serpent is a true labor of love.

The Political Uses of Literature

The Political Uses of Literature PDF Author: Benjamin Kohlmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501399314
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a mode of activism and aesthetic engagement with the political challenges of the current moment. The question of literature's 'uses' has recently become a key topic of academic and public debate. Paradoxically, however, these conversations often tend to bypass the rich history of engagements with literature's distinctly political uses that form such a powerful current of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production and critical-theoretical reflection. The Political Uses of Literature reopens discussion of literature's political and activist genealogies along several interrelated lines: As a foundational moment, it draws attention to the important body of interwar politicized literature and to debates about literature's ability to intervene in social reality. It then traces the mobilization of related conversations and artistic practices across several historical conjunctures, most notably the committed literature of the 1960s and our own present. In mapping out these geographically and artistically diverse traditions – including case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, India and Russia – contributors advance critical discussions in the field, making questions pertaining to politicized art newly compelling to a broader and more diverse readership. Most importantly, this volume insists on the need to think about literature's political uses today – at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any kind of political efficacy for art, even as the need to do so is growing more and more acute. Literature may not proffer easy answers to our political problems, but as this collection suggests, the writing of the 20th century holds out aesthetic resources for a renewed engagement with the dilemmas that face us now.