Mexico in Mind [Paperback]

Maria Finn Dominguez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 2006

Two centuries of writers drawn to Mexico—from D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and Tennessee Williams to Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, and Sandra Cisneros

This scintillating literary travel guide gathers the work of great writers celebrating Mexico in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Ranging from 1843 to the present, Mexico in Mind offers a remarkably varied sampling of English-speaking writers’ impressions of the land south of the border.

John Reed rides with Pancho Villa in 1914; Graham Greene defends Mexico’s priests; Langston Hughes describes a bullfight; Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs find Mexico intoxicating; Alice Adams visits Frida Kahlo’s house; Ann Louise Bardach meets the mysterious Subcommandante Marcos face to face. Fictional accounts are equally vivid, including poems by Muriel Rukeyser, Archibald Macleish, and Sandra Cisneros, short stories by Katherine Anne Porter and Ray Bradbury, and excerpts from John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, and Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. From the bustle of Mexico City to coffee planations in remote Chiapas, from Mayan ruins to the markets at Oaxaca, the scenes evoked in this anthology reflect the rich variety of the place and its history, sure to enchant vacationers, expatriates, and armchair travelers everywhere.

Alice Adams • Ann Louise Bardach • Ray Bradbury • William S. Burroughs • Frances Calderón de la Barca • Ana Castillo • Sandra Cisneros • Anita Desai • Erna Fergusson • Charles Macomb Flandrau • Donna Gershten • Graham Greene • Langston Hughes • Fanny Inglehart • Gary Jennings • Diana Kennedy • Jack Kerouac • D. H. Lawrence • Malcolm Lowry • Archibald Macleish • Rubén Martínez • Tom Miller • Katherine Anne Porter • John Reed • Luis Rodriguez • Richard Rodriguez • Muriel Rukeyser • Salman Rushdie • John Steinbeck • Edward Weston • Tennessee Williams

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 31 Anglophone writers from myriad genres collected in this anthology look to Mexico for adventure, refuge and revelation. Finn, who edited Cuba in Mind for Vintage's In Mind travel series, covers a number of eras and niches from unexpected angles: she has Harvard patrician Charles Macomb Flandrau (1871-1938) writing a letter home from a Chiapas coffee plantation; 19th century American adventuress Fanny Chambers Gooch Ingelhart writes of piñata whacking from her Saltillo adobe; a section from Graham Greene's Another Mexico (1939) describes seasickness unforgettably. More recent pieces from Richard Rodriguez, Ana Castillo and Salman Rushdie tackle identity, self-fashioning and myth with a few pages each. Finn's thoughtful organization allows readers to contemplate a discussion about market day between D.H. Lawrence, who feels the centavos are "an excuse" for an "intermingling of voices, a threading together of different wills," and British culnarinian Diana Kennedy, more practical, who describes the counter at the market devoted to five varieties of cazón, or dogfish. In her introduction, Finn writes: "Each of my visits to Mexico has been unsatisfying to me in the sense that I just want to go back and see more." Her anthology has the same effect.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Maria Finn is the editor of the anthology Cuba in Mind (Vintage, 2004) and author of a memoir about falling in love and marrying her cab driver in Havana, Cuba. She has written for Audubon, Saveur, Metropolis, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has published literary work in magazines such as Gastronomica, The Chicago Review, New Letters, and Exquisite Corpse. She has lived and worked in Alaska, Guatemala, and Spain, and traveled extensively in Latin America.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307274888
• ISBN-13: 978-0307274885
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Travel > Latin America > Mexico

More About the Author

I was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri and when I finished college there, I moved to Homer, Alaska with the goal of earning lots of money so I could travel in Latin America. I earned very little money in Alaska, but fell in love with the raw beauty, the adventures, the storytelling and so went back season after season. First I worked on a small salmon seiner skippered by a woman, and then in remote fields camps where I monitored salmon swimming up rivers for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. I spent a winter in Guatemala developing a fishpond on an orphanage, one teaching English in Seville, Spain, and two hiking and climbing in Peru. I moved to New York City to attend the Creative Writing MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. I lived in Brooklyn for over 10 years and taught in the English Departments at Hunter College/CUNY and St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. I moved to Sausalito, California in 2008 and live on a floating houseboat with a rooftop garden that includes a tango floor. This year I have two books being published. "Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home" (Algonquin) about recovering from heartbreak by learning to tango, and another one, "A Little Piece of Earth, How to Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces" (Rizzoli) about edible gardening for foodies. I write a weekly newsletter/blog, City Dirt: City Dirt: The Bay Area Weekly Garden Newsletter for Foodies, Foragers, Tree-Huggers and Beauty Lovers. (www.citydirt.net) My author website is www.mariafinn.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sampling of Impressions of Mexico, April 13, 2009

By 

Michael C. Tighe "Bookbinger" (Glide, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mexico in Mind (Paperback)

Maria Finn's richly rewarding anthology, "Mexico in Mind," was the prescribed book for a class in literature about Mexico, which I took in Puerto Vallarta.

It is a relatively brief collection of short prose pieces, poems, excerpts from longer prose pieces, and the opening scene from the Tennessee Williams play, Night of the Iguana. In her introduction, Finn explains that the book "offers a sampling of travelers' impressions of Mexico over the span of two centuries."

The book is divided thematically into six sections, the first called "Love in Mexico" or "Bésame Mucho." Pieces in this section range from Katherine Anne Porter's short story, "The Martyr," written in 1923, delightfully satirizing the relationship between Diego Rivera and Lupe Marin, to the touching Luis Rodriguez poem, "The Old Woman of Mérida," written in 2005, in which an old woman sits by a window looking out at the sea and longing for her sailor-husband, "swallowed" by the sea. An excerpt from "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck has a familiar sense of foreboding, and Ray Bradbury's short story "Calling Mexico" is a poignant tale of an old man dying in Illinois, longing to hear once more the sounds of the city he knew in his younger years. Another three selections complete the section.

The next section, "Sights, Sounds, and Tastes" or "Fiesta del Pueblo," opens with an excerpt from Frances Calderón de la Barca's 1843 book, "Life in Mexico," describing the floating gardens of Mexico City. Another six pieces complete the section and include an excerpt from D. H. Lawrence's 1927 "Mornings in Mexico," richly describing the spectacle of a Mexican market day, and an entertaining essay "Searching for the Heart of La Bamba," written by Tom Miller in 2000, in which he traces the origins of the song "La Bamba" from its sixteenth-century roots to the popular rock-and-roll version in the United States. By now, the reader is enjoying his cultural immersion.

In the section called "Revolutionary Encounters" or "¡Que Viva Mexico!," Finn introduces the reader to some of Mexico's more notorious historical figures. John Reed takes us along with him as he rides with Pancho Villa in 1914 in an excerpt from his collection "Insurgent Mexico." And closer to the present, we meet the anonymous leader of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, who calls himself Subcomandante Marcos, in Ann Louise Bardach's 1994 piece for Vanity Fair, "Mexico's Poet Rebel."

It is in an interesting section called "Down and Out in Mexico" or "Desperados" that Finn opens with the opening scene from "Night of the Iguana." This is followed by an alcoholic rant excerpted from Malcolm Lowry's 1947 "Under the Volcano," a snippet of Jack Kerouac's 1960 essay, "Mexico Fellaheen," taking us along on a dusty outback bus ride replete with opium-laced marijuana cigarettes "the size of a cigar," and a few pages from William S. Burroughs' 1953 novel "Junky," recounting in fiction his drug-addict days in Mexico City, scoring heroin and morphine.

But it seems as if Finn has saved the best pieces for the final two sections of the book. In "Icons and Identity" or "Patria and Pilgrims," the writers are all American Latinos reflecting on the mother country of their forbearers. Ana Castillo's 1994 essay, "My Mother's Mexico," is especially touching. Although she was raised in an essentially Mexican ghetto in Chicago, she discovered on a trip to the Mexican barrio of her mother's youth, that the poverty she experienced was nothing like the hard-luck poverty her mother fled when she came north to Chicago. Richard Rodriguez, Rubén Martínez, and Sandra Cisneros complete this penultimate section with equally moving reflections on their Mexican heritage.

The anthology concludes with a section called "Ritual and Myth" or "Dia de los Muertos and Beyond." The pieces in this section range from a short piece from Erna Fergusson's book, "Fiesta in Mexico," describing the annual celebration of the Day of the Dead on November 2nd to a 1940 description of a bullfight by Langston Hughes from his autobiography, "The Big Sea." There is a wonderful account of the Indian fliers descending from a tall tree tied by a rope on one leg, circling the tree with arms outstretched like birds flying. Set in the time of the Aztec Empire from Gary Jennings' 1980 historical novel, Aztec, the piece describes the origins of the incredible show that takes place several times a day by daring Indians on the Malecon here in Puerto Vallarta. The last piece in the book is an excerpt from Salman Rushdee's 1999 novel, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet." Set in the town of Tequila in the state of Guadalajara, bringing together a rock star, an earthquake, and tequila in a fitting conclusion to this potpourri of Mexican culture and history.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a trip to Mexico, June 29, 2006

By 

M. Golden (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mexico in Mind (Paperback)

This book is a collection of essays and stories, each by a different author. As a group, they capture a real feel for the country, its culture, and the people.

A must read for anyone from Mexico - or anyone who just loves the place.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting variety, February 12, 2011

By 

Cynthia M. Reves - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mexico in Mind (Paperback)

I enjoyed the short stories in this collection. I read them on a trip to the Yucatan. It is interesting to see the country from different perspectives.