Balún Canán

"Rosario Castellanos is much better known as a poet, but my first point of entry into her work was through Balún Canán . I read it when I was 17 years old and it left a deep mark on me. It is also a young girl’s perspective, a sensitive and vulnerable subjectivity that narrates the colonialist violence in the south-east of the country, the subjugation and harassment suffered by the original peoples of the territory that we know today as Chiapas. Thanks to Rosario Castellanos I fell in love with this region; her novel lit a spark of fascination with the indigenous peoples and their languages, which led me to leave home for San Cristóbal de las Casas, trying to get involved with the Zapatistas, though of course I was unsuccessful. In any case something good must have come of it, and I owe that entirely to Balún Canán."