These poems by Latin American women reflect a multilingual region

The cover of Daughters of Latin America.

Harper Collins

Award-winning writer, editor and filmmaker Sandra Guzmán once heard an alarming statistic: Every 14 days, an Indigenous language dies around the world.

That is, in part, what prompted her to seek out those voices for a new multilingual project centered on Latin American women. The result is the book, Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women, which compiles the work of 140 writers, activists and thought leaders from the region.

“What clicked was this notion that whenever we think about writers, we don’t automatically think of a Latin American woman writer,” Guzmán told All Things Considered. “We don’t think of an Esmeralda Santiago or a Sandra Cisneros … or Guadeloupe’s masterful writer Maryse Condé or Edwidge Danticat.”

“And these are women who have historically have litten and guided me, and so why not bring together the voices in one volume?”

Guzmán also took inspiration from an existing collection, called New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent. It features more than 200 women from that region.

Her anthology weaves poems, short stories, essays, speeches and more. The contributors live across the Americas and the Caribbean, in Europe and in other parts of the world; some are immigrants, others are members of Indigenous communities. And there are more than 20 languages in the book.

“We are one of the most multilingual, multiethnic, multiracial, multireligious regions in the world,” Guzmán said. “So for me, it was really important to convey that diversity.”

There is, for example, Rosa Chávez, a Maya K’iche’-Kaqchikel poet and artist from…