Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim

Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim is a scholar of Maya oral tradition and popular literature. In 2005, she received two national prizes for her work: her short story series Chen konel / Es por demás [It’s too much] won first place in the Alfredo Barrera Vásquez contest for Maya Language Narrative, and her poetic novel U k’a’ajsajil u ts’u’ noj k’áax / Recuerdos del corazón de la montaña [Memories of the heart of the mountain] won the Enedino Jiménez Indigenous Literature Prize. She has published many other volumes of prose, and her work has been featured in several anthologies. She is currently preparing a trilingual personal anthology in Maya, Spanish, and English. About her own work, she has observed, “My creation is particular because my protagonists are Maya women, which has not happened often in literature in Yucatec Maya. I artistically re-elaborate the memory of Maya women who performed labors that were stigmatized by society. In my texts, Maya identity is recreated as part of the characters’ environment, it flows with agility to the readers’ eyes; in the everyday lives of the characters we find Maya traditions and religious beliefs, in a plot that draws in readers. And the meaning of the peoples’ names is intimately linked to their activities and ways of being.”