Xánath 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. Xánath 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 Corazón 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 González writes of Conjuro: "A decisively Amerindian song breathes through the pages of Xánath 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."
