Popol Vuh: A Retelling
by Ilan Stavans, Gabriela Larios, Homero Aridjis
It's hard to read creation myths without understanding the cultural references, but you'd need so many footnotes it would probably look like pages of Talmud. There were a few references I caught that weren't fully explained in the text (e.g. the creation of humans from maize involves Paxil, brokenness, and Cayala, bitter water, to create human blood --- nixtamalization!), but that just proved to me how much was going over my head. Getting a sense of the shape of the mythology (descending and sometimes rising from the underworld, repeated apocalypses) and some common themes (twins) was still worthwhile and interesting.
Sadly not a comic (I would read the hell out of that) but nice, if intermittent, illustrations. But again, with so much visual symbolism that I know I must have been missing....!
Pronunciation guide thanks to my excellent linguistics nerd friend Cass: "x" = "sh", "j" = "h" (like in Spanish). I assume ' is for a glottal stop, but don't quote me on that. This seems like the kind of thing that should have been in the book....