The University of Arizona Press
July 16, 2024
Paging through our Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 catalogs, you will see a variety of modern and historic Nahuatl images. Several covers include an image known as a glyph representing communication: a circular swirl, like a breath of air, often placed near the mouths of human figures. This glyph is even visible just outside the University of Arizona Press offices in a newly installed art piece.
In Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them, editor Kelly McDonough writes that the Nahuatl language was spoken throughout Mexico and much of Central America before Spanish colonization, and more than 2.5 million people speak Nahuatl today. The root “nahua” means “audible, intelligible, clear.” (Karttunen, Frances 1992, An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres, 156–157).
Writing that Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies by L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. The authors offer an alternative to handbooks written with white, Eurocentric frameworks and/or from a white, Eurocentric lens. To emphasize the Chicanx and Latinx focus, the book is illustrated with images by Anel Flores using Nahuatl, a language that predates European contact. Flores used the Nahuatl glyph for communication illustrating a conversation between two people. It is a circular swirl, like a breath of air. Flores also created versions of the glyph for the front cover art; UA Press Art Director Leigh McDonald incorporated the glyph into the final cover design:
Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays. Editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda selected a painting by Margaret Alarcón for their cover, with the Nahuatl communication glyph at the center:
Kelly S. McDonough reveals how Nahuas have explored, understood, and explained the world around them in pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary time periods in Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them. In this work, she address Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources like the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. The cover features illustrations of Nahuatl glyphs from the Florentine Codex:
Edward Anthony Polanco, author of Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535–1660, requested Nahua art on the cover of his book. Historian Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl, to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih (healing specialists), tiçiyotl (healing knowledge), and their practices within a Western complex. Polanco argues for the usage of Indigenous terms when discussing Indigenous concepts and arms the reader with the Nahuatl words to discuss central Mexican Nahua healing. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of women as titiçih and highlights their work as creators and keepers of knowledge. The author commissioned the cover art from an artist in the Nahua community in Panchimalco, El Salvador. In the painting, the Nahuatl communication glyph emanates from two women’s mouths. This book will be published in Fall 2024:
Finally new art installed in our central staircase in the Main University of Arizona Libraries last year reminds the University of Arizona Press staff about the importance of communication. Located on the same floor as the UA Press office, “Desert Dwellers, 2023” by Carlos Valenzuela and Jennifer Dwyer is one of four mosaics. The prickly pear cactus has the Nahuatl glyph for communication on its pads and fruits, perhaps showing that the desert plants and animals communicate with each other and with us:
