Sandra Guzmán

The third annual WIT (Words, Ideas and Thinkers) Literary Festival that comes to Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street in Lenox from September 27th to 29th will explore the theme “The Power of Words: Why Writers Matter.”

None of the presenters during that weekend can better exemplify the power of words or why writers matter than Afro Indigenous journalist and editor Sandra Guzmán, who will appear Sunday, September 29th, at 9:30AM with author Jamaica Kincaid, best known for her deeply personal works of lyric fiction.

Guzmán explores the diversity Latine writers in her critically acclaimed anthology, The Daughters of Latin America. “I will be in conversation with one of my heroes,” said Guzmán. “I have read and reread Jamaica’s work in my mother’s land, just a few nautical miles from where Jamaica was born. The works mean so much more when you are surrounded by the rain forest, the salt air and the sea. Jamaica is an exquisite thinker and writer. I want to ask her all the questions rather than have her ask me.”

Guzmán, who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New Jersey, is an award-winning storyteller, culture writer, literary editor and documentary filmmaker. Her anthology of Latine writers explores diverse literary contributions ranging from a Mazatec shaman to a 16th-century nun; from a 19th-century poet to a 21st-century journalist. “These are women feeling their historical times, feeling their ‘womaness,’ feeling their matriarchal power,” Guzmán said.

Her Daughters of Latin America anthology grew out of a call from Tracy Sherrod, then editor of Amisted, a HarperCollins imprint. “I inherited this brilliant idea,” Guzmán said. “There was already an international anthology called New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, who compiled about 210 voices of women of African descent. Tracy sent me a copy and I would read different texts every single night. A couple of months later, she called me and asked me about doing an anthology of Latine writers. I asked her what her her vision for the anthology was and she said, ‘It’s your anthology, do whatever you want.’ That gave me wings. Imagine being told to do what you want.”

What she wanted to do was capture stories that ranged from indigenous stories in native languages never before recorded, all the way through to 21st-century emerging authors. She sought to include as many “daughters” as she could. “This anthology is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

She knew from the beginning that she wanted oral history to be part of the anthology. Of the 140 storytellers included in the anthology, 24 are indigenous voices. “Every two weeks an indigenous language dies somewhere—but indigenous languages don’t just die; they are murdered by colonization,” she said. “I wanted to figure out who were these poets and writers still writing in their mother tongues.”

The stories are presented in both English and their original languages.

“They only spoke their native languages. They didn’t write and they were being ignored. We know about Homer. He was illiterate but that was okay because he was a Westerner and a man. I wanted to elevate these stories. It is a big deal for me to launch the anthology with a chant as ancient as The Iliad translated from Mazatec to Spanish to English.”

Ironically the chant was available to her only because of the perfidy of a Caucasian businessman who betrayed the trust of Shaman Maria Sabina, sometimes called the “mushroom priestess.” R Gordon Wasson, a banker, persuaded the shaman to let him participate in a healing ritual which he recorded and later wrote about without her permission. From the indigenous perspective, this was considered a "a story of extraction, cultural appropriation, bioprospecting and colonization” and Maria Sabina was roundly criticized by her people.

“Her house was burned down twice and she suffered greatly because of this,” Guzmán said. “But because he recorded her chant, I was able to hear it. I wanted to lift her work and understand the greatness of a woman who has been ignored. This was a book to ensure the literary voices of women throughout Latin Americas are heard.

“I come from a long line of storytellers who work in the oral literary tradition,” she continued. “My grandfather was a fisherman who would have a bonfire every night to repel mosquitos and he would tell us stories. That’s how he passed along his traditions to us. My mother was an indigenous woman who would take me to the tree of memory and tell me stories that were 500 years old. We lived by the moon cycle—it was all part of my childhood.”

A scion of a people who greeted Columbus from their shore when his ships arrived in the New World, Guzmán’s mother didn’t consider herself indigenous. “She never allowed me to use the word ‘Indian.’ She said Columbus came and used a stupid word. We were just whoever we were. We come from a region of the world where we have lived for thousands of years. The musicality and the language is in our DNA. I tried to, in best way I could, to honor the different lineages in Latin America,” Guzmán said.

Beyond the ancient voices, are more modern writers: Grammy, National Book Award, Cervantes and Pulitzer Prize winners as well as a Nobel Laureate and the next generation of literary voices. It took her two years to compile the anthology, a process she considered equivalent to pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts degree. It was “an exquisite challenge” to balance the contemporary and ancestor voices. “What is beautiful about an anthology is that it is like an appetizer,” she said. “The idea is for the reader to be inspired to delve deeper.”

“The work that I do takes time, like fine wine,” she said. “It’s a deep dive. The Daughters of Latin America honors literature that has been forgotten. A lot of it has been erased and some of the authors had to write as men. When many people think of Latin America, they narrow it to Spanish-speaking countries but some of these women write in French and English.”

She noted that Latin American writers from Puerto Rico are often left out of anthologies as they are not considered to be part of the US literary tradition while Hispanic anthologies do not consider them to be part of Latin America.

Seven other conversational pairings have been announced for the WIT Festival, with noted personalities such as playwright Tony Kushner and TV political analyst Rachel Maddow; award-winning novelists Jennifer Egan and Joseph O’Neill, and literary historian Stephen Greenblatt and scholar-translator Emily Wilson.

Also appearing will be essayist Cathy Park Hong with Arab-Israeli novelist and newspaper columnist Sayed Kashua; national leaders in the fields of civil rights and higher education, Sherrilyn Ifill and Ruth Simmons; and Latin writers Luis Alberto Urrea and Marie Arana.

There will be an opening reception at Stonover Farm Thursday, September 26th at 6 PM where sponsors and visiting writers will mingle over cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres.

The Power of Words will be held Friday, September 27th, also at 6PM on Strawberry Hill where a farm-to-table casual salon dinner will he provided by chef Brian Alberg. On Saturday, September 28th at 6 PM, Why Writers Matter will be held at Stags Glen, a historic home once owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A sit-down dinner will be provided by the chefs of SOMA and a chance to talk with visiting writers.

Tickets can be obtained by clicking here.

Click here to be added to a wait list for sold-out programs.

Those who need assistance can call of email Shakespeare and Company’s box office at boxoffice@shakespeare.org or 413-637-3353.