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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm
Start Date
8-5-2023 5:30 PM
End Date
8-5-2023 6:20 PM
Description
When Gods of Jade and Shadow was published in 2019, it was acclaimed both for its excellent writing and its revisioning of Mesoamerican mythology. While there is certainly a centering of indigenous American myth over the Western religion, depicted as alien and imposed, the novel also belongs to a growing body of feminist literature in the #MeToo era that critiques and reimagines the power structures of the original stories. This paper explores the literary reconstruction of Xibalba, the underworld of Mayan myth, as Casiopea Tun seeks to restore the god Hun-Kame to his rightful throne at great personal cost. The novel offers a dispassionate, even bleak, narrative about the struggle for power in the world, a struggle that Casiopea seems bound to lose as an impoverished female with indigenous ancestry. I argue that her journey is not about restoring a lost heritage, so much as it is about realizing the legacy of that heritage in the world and making the sacrifices necessary to abandon the past and embrace modernity. The survival of the gods lies in their ability to move on from a violent and destructive past and adapt to a world with different values.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons
Reforming Xibalba in Gods of Jade and Shadow
When Gods of Jade and Shadow was published in 2019, it was acclaimed both for its excellent writing and its revisioning of Mesoamerican mythology. While there is certainly a centering of indigenous American myth over the Western religion, depicted as alien and imposed, the novel also belongs to a growing body of feminist literature in the #MeToo era that critiques and reimagines the power structures of the original stories. This paper explores the literary reconstruction of Xibalba, the underworld of Mayan myth, as Casiopea Tun seeks to restore the god Hun-Kame to his rightful throne at great personal cost. The novel offers a dispassionate, even bleak, narrative about the struggle for power in the world, a struggle that Casiopea seems bound to lose as an impoverished female with indigenous ancestry. I argue that her journey is not about restoring a lost heritage, so much as it is about realizing the legacy of that heritage in the world and making the sacrifices necessary to abandon the past and embrace modernity. The survival of the gods lies in their ability to move on from a violent and destructive past and adapt to a world with different values.
Comments
SESSION VI
5:30 PM—6:20 Eastern
4:30 PM—5:20 Central
3:30 PM—4:20 Mountain
2:30 PM—3:20 Pacific
9:30 PM—10:20 GMT