
Popol Vuh
by Anonymous
The Maya creation story, finally in its own words.
For you if
you want to understand Mesoamerican civilization from inside its own mythology rather than through the lens of the people who conquered it
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$18 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
The sacred book of the K'iche' Maya, written down in the 16th century from oral tradition that predates the conquest by centuries. The creation of the world, the Hero Twins defeating the lords of death, the making of humans from corn. The Indigenous Americas' answer to Genesis — and older, and stranger, and more interesting. Everything that Mesoamerican civilization built was built inside this worldview. Start here.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Guatemala • Latin America
- Voice
- Written by a Guatemalan author
- Themes
- creation myths
- Topics
- maya civilization
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Like Water for Chocolate(1992)
dir. Alfonso Arau
Forbidden love, served through food.
In early-1900s Mexico, Tita is forbidden by family tradition from marrying the man she loves, so she pours her longing into the food she cooks — food that carries her emotions, sometimes literally, into everyone who eats it. Adapted from Laura Esquivel's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in making a kitchen the site of rebellion — Tita's cooking becomes the one language her mother can't control or silence. Pedagogical in showing how inherited "duty" polices women's desire generation after generation, and what it costs to break that chain.

Pedro Páramo(2024)
dir. Rodrigo Prieto
A ghost town where the dead won't stop talking.
A man travels to his late mother's hometown to find the father he never knew, only to discover Comala is a ghost town in the most literal sense — populated by the dead, still narrating the tyranny of the cacique who once ruled it. Adapted from Juan Rulfo's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in blurring the line between the living and the dead until power and guilt outlast the man who held them — Pedro Páramo's tyranny haunts Comala long after his death. Pedagogical in showing how one man's greed can hollow out an entire town's future.
Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
Prayers for the Stolen
Jennifer Clement

Girls raised to disappear before the cartel finds them.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Daughters of Juárez
Teresa Rodríguez

Mothers refusing to let their daughters be statistics.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
My Mexico
Diana Kennedy

Fifty years of Mexican kitchens before they're gone.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Devil's Highway
Luis Alberto Urrea

Twenty-six men. The Arizona desert. Fourteen survived.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
