Hector Rolando Xol Choc (Aj Chab’in) – 6 Mayan Glyph Poems – translated by Paul Worley


Hector-Rolando-Xol-Choc

Hector Rolando Xol Choc (Aj Chab’in) is a Q’eqchi’ Maya researcher, linguist, and writer from Guatemala. He was educated in Maya Linguistics and Education for Maya Peoples. He has worked as a researcher of and advocate for Guatemalan Maya languages since 1997, and was a member of his community’s Maya K’iche’ leadership in 2017. As a university professor, he teaches courses on Maya Thought, Sociolinguistics, the Thought of Guatemala’s Peoples, and Education. He has also been a linguist and epigrapher with the Proyecto Uaxactun in Flores, Petén, Guatemala. He is the author of numerous articles and books on Maya knowledge, and he recently started writing b’ich Q’eqchi’ (Q’eqchi’ Maya poetry).

Paul M. Worley is a settler scholar from Charleston, SC, and Professor of Spanish at Appalachian State University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Co-written with Rita M. Palacios, his most recent book, Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019), was given an honorable mention for Best Book in the Humanities by LASA’s Mexico Section. He is also the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and a Fulbright Scholar. Together with Melissa D. Birkhofer, he is co-translator of Miguel Rocha Vivas’s Word Mingas(2021), whose Spanish edition won Cuba’s Casa de las Américas Prize in 2016. He has also translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Matiúwàa (Mè’phàà), Celerina Sánchez, Manuel Tzoc (K’iche’), and Ruperta Bautista (Tsotsil).