Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion

Edited by C.M. Mayo

Whereabouts Press, $14.95, ISBN: 1-883513-15-4 

Reviewed by Robert Simmonds 

C.M. Mayo, the author of Sky Over El Nido (the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction) and Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the other California, is one of Mexico File’s favorite contributors. She is also the founding editor of Tameme, a journal of Mexican/English literary writing. Her latest creation is a compendium of some of the best new literary writing to emerge from Mexico.  

Published in March 2006, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, focuses on the writings of some of Mexico’s best-known writers. Mexico has long been a top travel destination for Americans, but, until now, there has not been a panoramic vision of Mexico offered by some of Mexico’s top contemporary writers of fiction and literary prose. Here are writings – many translated for the first time – that bring you to the people of the beaches, the deserts, jungles, mountains, and mega-cities. The voices are rich, diverse, enthralling, and strange. These writings shatter stereotypes as they journey from the Pacific to the Gulf, from Yucatan to the U.S./Mexican border, from humble rancheros to a fabulous mountain-top castle.  

Margaret Sayers Peden, a leading literary translator and the editor of Mexican Writers on Writing, has this to say about C.M. Mayo’s latest creation – “This delicious volume has lovingly gathered a banquet of pieces that reveal Mexico in all its infinite variety, its splendid geography, its luminous peoples. I was constantly surprised and pleased by the revelations and insights shared by Mexico’s finest writers.”  

Reading this book will magnify your appreciation of Mexico and its people during your travel adventures.