Janil Uc Tun

Born and raised in Ticul, Yucatán, Janil Uc Tun grew up in a Yucatec Maya-speaking family and attended school in Spanish. Janil’s book Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory, where this poem first appeared, remains unpublished, though it won the prestigious “LXIII Juegos Florales Nacionales de Ciudad del Carmen” Award for Poetry in 2022. In 2025, he was awarded the “Juegos Florales Hispanoamericanos Quetzaltenango” Award in Poetry. Janil is also a dramaturgist and won the 2022 Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia Joven “Gerardo Mancebo del Castillo Trejo,” a Latin American prize given annually to a young playwright. Janil’s poetic pacing and dramatic timing are impactable as he addresses gentrification, colonialism, farmworkers’ rights, and the battle to preserve indigenous ways of life in this lyric bildungsroman.