Conjuro - Softcover

Xanath Caraza's first book-length collection Conjuro(Spellbound), with introduction by Fred Arroyo, is published by Mammoth Publications, a Native-owned literary press. In this tri-lingual text, Caraza combines Spanish, English, and Nahuatl (language of the Aztecs) to create a continuous spell of verse. Caraza's writing derives from her awareness of Indigenous thought: words are tangible objects, not abstractions, and capable of influencing physical reality's web of interactions. The poet's connection to her Indigenous and Mexican heritage energizes her meditations and proclamations, which are set in Veracruz, Spain, Paris, Chicago, and Kansas City, her present home. Caraza is a dynamic performance poet as well as a skilled writer. This debut collection establishes her as a major voice of 21st American letters. This book shows how multiple cultures co-exist for United States immigrants. It is appropriate for young adults, Latin American Studies, Indigenous American Studies, and Midwest U.S. Studies. Xanath Caraza is a traveler, educator, poet and short story writer. Originally from Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, she is a Kansas City resident. She has an M.A. in Romance Languages. She lectures in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her chapbook Corazon Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems (2012) is from TL Press. She won the 2003 Ediciones Nuevo Espacio international short story contest in Spanish and was a 2008 finalist for the first international John Barry Award. Caraza is an advisory circle member of the Con Tinta literary organization and a former board member of the Latino Writers Collective in Kansas City. Rigoberto Gonzalez writes of Conjuro: "A decisively Amerindian song breathes through the pages of Xanath Caraza's Conjuro, a charitable book of invocation, incantation, lamentation and healing. Caraza's poems are the antidote to our troubled times: they reach toward ancestral spirit and woman-strength, they collect wisdom from the natural and experiential landscapes, they reorient language away from duplicity and back to the "oral traditions of the heart." A truly moving, and spellbinding, debut."

Xanath Caraza is a traveler, educator, poet and short story writer. She was named number one of the 2013 Top Ten "New" Latino Authors to Watch (and Read) by LatinoStories.com. Originally from Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, she has lived in Vermont and Kansas City. She has an M.A. in Romance Languages, and lectures in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is the author of Silabas, forthcoming in 2014 from Mammoth Publications, LO QUE TRAE LA MAREA/WHAT THE TIDE BRINGS (Mouthfeel Press, 2013), Conjuro (Mammoth Publications, 2012), and Corazon Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems (TL Press, 2012). Caraza writes the US Latino Poets en espanol column, an international collaboration between Letras Latinas (Notre Dame University) and Periodico de Poesia (UNAM, Mexico), and curates the National Poetry Month a-Poem-a-Day project for the Con Tinta Literary Organization since 2012. She is the recipient of the 2003 Ediciones Nuevo Espacio international short story contest in Spanish and was a 2008 finalist for the first international John Barry Award.