By Carole Reedy
Oaxaca is ethnically and linguistically the most diverse state in Mexico; it’s also the home state of Mexico’s most popular and effective president, Benito Juárez. It’s here where July’s wildly colorful annual music and dance celebration Guelaguetza takes place. And to quench your thirst, Oaxaca is known for its smooth yet tangy liquor known as mezcal.
If that’s not enough, Oaxaca cheese and mole are incomparable.
I was fortunate to spend ten happy, serene years living on a Oaxacan beach. What follows is a selection from the written word in diverse styles, eras, and points of view of this highly original Mexican state.
The Ultimate Good Luck, by Richard Ford (1981)
We know Richard Ford as the author of The Sportswriter (1986) and its sequel Independence Day (1995), with Frank Bascombe as the protagonist; Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize – there are three more Bascombe novels. Irving can lay claim to being our present-day Faulkner or Updike.
One reader calls this novel a “narcocorrida.” It certainly take us to the dark side of Mexico with drugs and eroticism in Ford’s unique understated style. The New York Times Book Review describes it as having a “taut, cinematic quality that bathes his story with the same hot, mercilessly white light that scorches Mexico.”
Recollections of Things to Come, by Elena Garro (1969)
The universally admired poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz calls this classic gem “a truly extraordinary work, one of the most perfect creations in contemporary Latin American literature.” These words and the recommendation from the venerated Paz are reason enough to open the pages of this unusual novel.
The fictional town of Ixtepec narrates the story, set in the post-Revolution time (late 1920s). You will meet all the town’s inhabitants, from those in high society to prostitutes on the street.
In an unusual episodic style, impressions move the plot of this novel, which is full of color, smells, and visual seasoning. Garro’s book is often considered one of the first magical realism novels. It is not a pretty picture of Mexico during this time of classism, racism, misogyny, and violence.
You may not be familiar with Garro, though she was at one point married to Octavio Paz. She has been ignored by Mexican intellectuals, who consider her a government informer on the 1968 student movement (known as the Tlatelolco massacre).
Garro spent many years in self-exile, living in the US, Spain, and France, but she returned to live in Cuernavaca, where she died at 81 near her beloved cats and daughter.
Lawrence in Oaxaca: A Quest for the Novelist in Mexico, by Ross Parmenta (1984)
The well-travelled British novelist D. H. Lawrence, famous yet controversial, spent just two years in the Lake Chapala and Oaxaca regions of Mexico.
After the Mexican Revolution, in 1923, he and his wife visited a Mexico that was recuperating from the dregs of war. It is here he finished his well-known Mexican novel The Plumed Serpent (1926). He also completed four of the essays that make up his popular Mornings in Mexico (1927), personal observations that capture the country’s spirit. Reading both these gems will be well worth your while.
Lawrence was not interested in the politics of the Mexican Revolution or the cultural and artistic aspects, such as Mexico’s famed muralists. Lawrence’s interest lay in the “mythical exaltation of the Indian,” which is at the core of The Plumed Serpent – an early draft of the novel was published as Quetzalcoatl (1998).
Lawrence and his wife fled to the US in 1922 after WWI, he having just escaped death from a bout of influenza. He did, however, die shortly thereafter, at age 44 in 1930, from complications of tuberculosis.
He once said “I want to gather together about twenty souls and sail away from this world of war and squalor and found a little colony where there shall be no money but a sort of communism as far as necessaries of life go, and some real decency … a place where one can live simply, apart from this civilization [with] a few other people who are also at peace and happy and live, and understand and be free.” Many would wish the same.
Lawrence in Mexico is a work of double affection both for the novelist and Oaxaca, the city in which he produced his memorable work.
Avenue of Mysteries: A Novel, by John Irving (2015)
John Irving, the modern popular American novelist influenced by Charles Dickens and Gunther Grass, likes to think of himself as a 19th-century storyteller. But Irving introduces additional elements and style that create an almost eccentric and modern atmosphere.
This, his fourteenth novel, is named after a street in Mexico City. It is a story divided into the two aspects of the life of Juan Diego Guerro. The first, where the heart of the novel lies, is reflections and memories of his young life in Oaxaca in the 1970s. The other is his present journey from Iowa to the Philippines to fulfill a promise.
Tayari Jones in The New York Times Book Review lauds this difference: “John Irving is his own thing, and so is his new novel. Avenue of Mysteries is thoroughly modern, accessibly brainy, hilariously eccentric, and beautifully human.”
Avenue of Mysteries is distinctly different from the more popular Irving novels that come to mind when you hear his name, such as The World According to Garp (1978), The Cider House Rules (1985), or A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989).
Oaxaca Journal, by Oliver Sacks (2002)
From Awakenings (1973) to A Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (1985), Sacks is best known for case studies of his patients. This British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science and, of course, author wrote nineteen books, many of them bestsellers.
A nature lover, Sacks blessed us with the beautiful Oaxaca Journal after his 2001 visit to the popular state. The book is an adventure in itself, manifesting the marvels of Oaxaca through his expansive point of view.
From the science of astronomy to the flavors of a luscious cuisine, from the dream-evoking waterfalls to the bustling street markets filled with intricate textiles, Sacks bequeaths us his larger perspective via minute details.
Before his death, Saks philosophized, “Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
Dress Her in Indigo: A Travis McGee Novel, John D. McDonald (1969)
Travis McGee is a household word to faithful McDonald readers. Loyal fans devour each new novel. This one, set in the backlands of Oaxaca, was no exception.
What is the attraction? Fans cite the author’s philosophical and social commentary as their reason to return to each new novel in the series. Dress Her in Indigo centers on a dead woman in a hippie-type community on the outskirts of Oaxaca.
One reader expressed it precisely: “I may never make it to Mexico, but after reading this book set in Mexico – I may not have to.” Another says the story “carries the color and the weight of Mexico on almost every page.”
Oaxaca de Rius, by Eduardo Humberto del Rio García (but known to all in Mexico by his pen name Rius; 2013)
The book boasts 128 eight pages of illustrative delight that explore the traditions, art, and conflicts of Oaxaca. “Drawings, jokes, and notes referring to the state where I live, fleeting impressions,” is how the author himself describes his book.
The sketches offer a glimpse into the gods, customs, churches, Zapotec traditions, festivals, culinary delights, mezcal, and all the rest that makes this state matchless.
Who was Rius? The Mexican government, in the announcement of his death, wrote, “During his lifetime, Rius aimed to contribute to the education and politicization of Mexicans, combat alienation, and foster a critical spirit.”
With Naranjo, Soto, Magú, and other cartoonists, he created Insurgencia popular, the news outlet of the Mexican Workers’ Party (PMT).
Lost in Oaxaca, by Jessica Winters Mireles (2020)
Jessica Winters has done her homework. Most impressive in all the reviews is her understanding and ability to convey the customs and cult ure of this glorious state.
The novel’s plot centers around a schoolteacher in search of her student and a Zapotec man who helps her understand the culture and customs of a society so different from her own, as well as how to view the world in a different light. He helps her navigate the wonders of an unfamiliar culture that is “rugged as the terrain itself.”
On your first or next exploration journey into Oaxaca, heed the advice of a popular song from my youth and “Slow down, you move too fast; you got to make the morning last.”
Soak it all in … and enjoy!