“[I]ndia y mujer es trago amargo”: a Maya woman contesting the Mexican State

Marisol Ceh Moo’s bilingual novel ‘Chen tumeen chu’úpen … /Sólo por ser mujer’ tells the harrowing story of Honorina Cadena García, a Maya Tzotzil woman who, in self-defense, killed her husband and was subsequently incarcerated. With a cultural studies lens, I carefully study the ways Honorina navigates and combats ongoing gender violence inside and outside her community. Although these conditions are denounced through the figure of Honorina, Ceh Moo does not leave us with a storyline of passive victimhood. In this article, I move this discussion forward by drawing on the concept of ‘unexpectedness,’ coined by Dakota scholar Phillip Deloria Honorina challenges societal norms in Mexican society by employing multiple creative strategies, including relationships with other women, ‘talking back,’ and re-signifying stereotypes. These tactics secure her ultimate freedom from prison and from an ongoing colonial structure that is set up for multiple forms of violence.