Table of Contents

Introduction

LOVE IN MEXICO
Bésame Mucho

Alice Adams
from Mexico: Some Travels and Some Travelers There (1991)

Edward Weston
from The Daybooks of Edward Weston (1923)

Katherine Anne Porter
“The Martyr” (1923)

Muriel Rukeyser
“Evening Plaza, San Miguel” (1944)

Ray Bradbury
“Calling Mexico” (1950)

John Steinbeck
from The Pearl (1945)

Luis Rodriguez
“The Old Woman of Mérida” (2005)


SIGHTS, SOUNDS, AND TASTES
Fiesta del Pueblo

Frances Calderón de la Barca
from Life in Mexico (1843)

Fanny Chambers Gooch Inglehart
from Face to Face with the Mexicans (1887)

Charles Macomb Flandrau
from Viva Mexico! (1908)

D. H. Lawrence
from Mornings in Mexico (1927)

Diana Kennedy
from My Mexico (1998)

Tom Miller
from “Searching for the Heart of La Bamba,” in Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink (2000)

REVOLUTIONARY ENCOUNTERS
¡Que Viva Mexico!

Archibald MacLeish
from Conquistador (1932)

John Reed
from Insurgent Mexico (1914)

Anita Desai
from The Zigzag Way (2004)

Graham Greene
from Another Mexico (1939)

Ann Louise Bardach
from “Mexico’s Poet Rebel” (1994)


DOWN AND OUT IN MEXICO
Desperados

Tennessee Williams
from Night of the Iguana (1961)

Malcolm Lowry
from Under the Volcano (1947)

Jack Kerouac
from “Mexico Fellaheen” (1960)

William S. Burroughs
from Junky (1953)

Donna M. Gershten
from Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth (2000)

ICONS AND IDENTITY
Patria and Pilgrims

Richard Rodriguez
from Days of Obligation (1992)

Ana Castillo
“My Mother’s México” (1994)

Rubén Martínez
from Crossing Over (2001)

Sandra Cisneros
“You Bring Out the Mexican in Me” (1994)

RITUAL AND MYTH
Día de los Muertos and Beyond

Erna Fergusson
from Fiesta in Mexico (1934)

Langston Hughes
from The Big Sea (1940)

Gary Jennings
from Aztec (1980)

Salman Rushdie
from The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)

About the Author

Maria Finn is the editor of the anthology Cuba in Mind (Vintage, 2004) and author of a memoir about falling in love and marrying her cab driver in Havana, Cuba. She has written for Audubon, Saveur, Metropolis, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has published literary work in magazines such as Gastronomica, The Chicago Review, New Letters, and Exquisite Corpse. She has lived and worked in Alaska, Guatemala, and Spain, and traveled extensively in Latin America.