Description: Lisa Kay Adam brings us the world of the Coahuiltecans, indigenous peoples of the Mexican-Texan border, whose language is now silent, sleeping. Xuāi is built from words and phrases of the only known records of this language, early dictionaries and word lists recorded by Franciscan monks, translated into Spanish.
Review Quotes:
This is a book of audacious imagination. Lisa Kay Adam brings us the world of the Coahuiltecans, indigenous peoples of the Mexican-Texan border, whose language is now silent, sleeping. Xuāi is built from words and phrases of the only known records of this language, early dictionaries and word lists recorded by Franciscan monks, translated into Spanish. With Mother Tongue phrases as ur-inspiration, the Coahuiltecans now live again. There is no higher purpose for poetry than to be the vehicle for language itself to survive. That is the purpose of xuāi.
--Bob Holman, Co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance