Saved on August 31 2026 from: https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/september/lightnings-strike-juana-karen-penate

From Lightning’s Strike by Juana Karen Peñate
VERSE
Author: Juana Karen Peñate
Translator: Carol Rose Little & Charlotte Friedman

Mayapple Press. 2026. 76 pages.

Through the poems in From Lightning’s Strike, Juana Karen Peñate invites us into her world and her word. In her introductory poem, “Chajk,” and the first section that centers on language, voice, and the birth of her word, she reflects the Mesoamerican concept of the Flowering Word, with roots in ancient times; the idea of poetry as a dialogue with the heart, to encounter the True Word within oneself. The heart then guides the poet and allows her to trust herself, her feelings, her sorrows, her joys, and her fearless and fierce will.

In the stunning first section she reveals language as alive, as its own being, emanating from the earth, full of movement, like the constellations, like fireflies, butterflies, dragonflies—free—going where they will. She shares a profoundly intimate Maya Ch’ol kinship with the earth, the cosmos, and language. Hers is a sensuous poetry of presence, calling us to feel the wet earth, wonder at the yellow corn turning to blue, see her language flourish and “move like a rainbow.” In section 3 of “My Language,” the poet says that sometimes her language loses itself “in the shallows of a stream” and “suddenly . . . appears again / like the mockingbird in times of longing.” Her language talks to her, asking, “How is the world? / My language becomes power, lightning, the sun,” reminding readers of “Chajk” and the moment of her birth as flame “from lightning’s strike.” She centers herself in poem after poem in the sentience of her origin, in her grandfather and grandmother, in the earth, the waters, in the puyil, the snail of Chiapas, always, even or especially in the moments of betrayal or derision.

In section 1, the poet notes the times her voice is mute, silent, unsteady, quavering, to the moment “My words slip, my veins / fill, with new blood,” and she finds her power, her “steady voice.” In her poem “Prayer for a Teacher—In Memory of José Antonio Reyes Matamoros,” the only instance where she names a particular individual, she honors her mentor, a man beloved in the flourishing Indigenous world of literature in Chiapas. He supported her finding her “steady voice.” She says of him, “let me hold you in death and raise you up,” “I want to echo you in the world.”

In section 2, Peñate begins by honoring the ancestors, “whose song is whispered in thunder.” The ancestors, the sacred moon, and the grandmothers dance together, “calling, making requests / for those who have been silenced,” since the original invasion up through the present. As their feet drum the earth, they know their power. The poet speaks to “X-ixik” (Woman), to herself and all women, “Mother Earth is our goodness, our world.” “Chuchu’” (Grandmother) is her sanctuary when the poet feels the assaults of the kaxlan, non-Indian, world. Her grandmother, forest and storm, is her certainty: “The candle sits undisturbed,” the flame constant, the one who lights her way. It is striking that the grandmother moves in the forest, with the other grandmothers, while the grandfather’s wisdom is grounded in the home, where his “song continues.”

With her bearings steady, grounded in who she is, in relation, to family, community, earth, sky, cosmos, the poet takes us to section 3, where her voice is assertive and even defiant. In the poem “Ña’tyayaj / Evidence,” she writes:

You will not be able to hide what’s left—
promises drowned by rivers,
the untold kept underground.
Their music remains in the mountains,
in the wäy disguised as Jaguar, Gray Fox, Snake.
You will not forget,
but remembering will suffocate you.

She is clear, exact. The people will continue. Her people, the Ch’ol. Indigenous peoples. The many wäy, the personal guardian spirits, will protect “what’s left,” “the untold kept underground.” As she has suggested throughout, the people’s “music remains in the mountains.” This collection mediates, in ripples, for distinct readers, and for distinct communities, in this case for English-speaking Native poets/communities who now have access to her work through this gift of translation. Her message is one of continuance, the force(s) of creation, memory, healing.

Peñate has an esteemed place in Indigenous letters, not only as a poet but also as an important feminist intellectual and cultural rights activist, in her home state of Chiapas, in Mexico, and in this hemisphere known as the Americas. Now, with this collection, she is reaching a broader international audience who can delight in the poems in From Lightning’s Strike, translated into English by Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman. In 2020 Peñate won the prestigious PLIA award (Premio de Literaturas Indígenas de América) for her collection Isoñil Ja’al / Danza de la Lluvia. The translators/editors selected poems from Isoñil Ja’al (2025) and Ipusik’al Matye’lum / Corazón de Selva (2013) and, in a gracious stroke, provided “A Guide to Pronunciation of the Ch’ol Alphabet,” thereby inviting readers to engage the sounds, song, and music of the original language. We are currently in the United Nations Decade of Indigenous Languages, 2022–2032. It would have been a treasure to include the title in Ch’ol as well as English.

Inés Hernández-Ávila
University of California, Davis

Find your copy of the book here: http://mayapplepress.com/from-lightnings-strike-juana-karen-penate-translated-from-the-chol-language-by-carol-rose-little-and-charlotte-friedman/