Beware the Great Horned Serpent! Chiapas under the Threat of Napoleon (review)
The book also includes translations of her mushroom-enhanced chants, displaying the poetic skill and audacity of this little woman, who dared to speak as an equal with all the incarnations of power, from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Benito Juárez. These chants are made more intelligible by an essay by Munn, who demonstrates how María Sabina deploys tropes and images meaningful to her Mazatec audience, even as she clearly manifested a special, rare mastery of her genre. The other essays accompanying the biography and chants are less useful—personal essays by writers and poets about their experiences meeting the great shaman, and poetry inspired by her. These essays show how, twenty years after her death, María Sabina survives as a powerful, multivocal symbol, inspiring people locally, nationally, and around the world with her complex, remarkable story.