Ää: Manifestos on Linguistic Diversity–– Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil

Reading Yásnaya Aguilar's articles collected in this volume, as well as the numerous social media comments that accompany and enrich them, is a pleasure I wholeheartedly recommend to all readers. Throughout these texts, as entertaining as they are refreshing, it is clear that Yásnaya Aguilar has been able to see beyond impositions and violence, driven by her deep passion for languages, linguistics, and literature, to transcend the confines of her native Ayuujk and her learned Spanish, approaching the most widely spoken languages in the world, such as Russian, but also the countless indigenous languages that are marginalized, threatened, and sometimes on the verge of disappearance across the globe.

In her unpretentious use of the plain Mexican dialect of Castilian, the constant generosity of her style, her humor and sincerity stand out, allowing her to build a defense as passionate as it is reasonable, as rigorous as it is enjoyable, of the value of indigenous languages, of cultural plurality, of the vitality of the traditions of our native peoples. This clarity also lends greater force to her denunciations against linguistic discrimination, against the contempt for indigenous languages, and against the arrogance of those who defend Spanish as a national language. Written over a decade, this book is destined to be an exponent of a genuine flourishing and rebirth of contemporary thought among speakers of indigenous languages. (Federico Navarrete)

No. of Pages: 208 / Dimensions: 21.5 cm (Height) x 14.7 cm (Width)