Stolen Flower | Guie’ ni zinebe | La flor que se llevó

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Stolen Flower

by
Irma Pineda

general information | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Stolen Flower
Author:	Irma Pineda
Genre:	Poetry
Written:	2013 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	100 pages
Original in:	Didxazá and Spanish
Availability:	Stolen Flower - US
	Stolen Flower - UK
	Stolen Flower - Canada
	La fleur qu'il emporta - France

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

	directly from: Yale University Press

Didxazá and Spanish title: Guie’ ni zinebe / La flor que se llevó
Translated and with an Introduction by Wendy Call
This is a trilingual edition, with the English translations facing the Didxazá original and Spanish translation
With fourteen photographs

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Our Assessment:

B+ : powerful collection; well-presented

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

Stolen Flower is presented as a trilingual edition. As translator Wendy Call explains in her Introduction:

Pineda writes her poems in Didxazá and then, as she says, "creates new versions" of the poems in Spanish. She says of these two versions: "You must think of them as parallel poems, one poem created in our language and another poem in Spanish. Both versions uphold their respective literary traditions."

Call notes that: "Because I can read both originals, I have two paths into English" (she notes that she has: "intermediate reading ability in Didxazá) -- making for an unusual and interesting exercise in translation, the English versions based on the two 'original'(-but-written--in-different-languages) versions (one based on but not simply a translation of the other ...) by the author.
Didxazá -- the Juchitán variant of Isthmus Zapotec -- is not widely spoken -- in her Translator's Notes Call writes that it is: "spoken by perhaps one hundred thousand people" -- and likely unfamiliar to most English-speaking readers (it is certainly entirely so to this one), so judging any sort of 'fidelity' to that text is difficult; indeed, I hardly even dare guess what the Didxazá sounds like -- see, for example, one poem as an example:

Cadi nagueendape’ salu’ jñaa
naa laaca racaladxe’ guxhooñe’ neza sti la’dxi’
racaladxe’ guidxela’ xhupa’ ladxidó’
ne qui chu’ dxiibi ti guinié’
Xisi qui ganda saya’ nagueenda
ti xpanda’ ca gue’tu’ ca
cucueezaca’ ñee

       Nevertheless, the inclusion of these versions is certainly welcome and of interest beyond the merely visual, and allows even those ignorant of the language the occasional additional insight into the poem(s). (Beyond that, of course, presenting the Didxazá originals serves an important function of linguistic validation and preservation -- especially important, in the case of such a 'small' (i.e. not widely spoken) language.)
       In her Introduction Call also describes why Pineda came to write this collection, summing up that: "Stolen Flower is a poet's response to systemic violence". While written in response to specific incidents and memories, what Pineda addresses is, sadly, all too familiar far beyond these and their Mexican context as well -- resonating all too readily for readers in the United States under the current regime, for example, and its brutalizing immigration 'enforcement'-scheme.
       Many of the poems are accusatory, addressed directly at those who crush at the bidding of the powers that be, dehumanizing themselves in the process. She asks them: "Who filled your heart with so much hate / that you are now blind to a smile", as well as:

Are you still a man ?
Does any humanity survive in you ?
Who are you now after donning
those steel-toed boots ?

Occasionally Pineda holds out hope that they can still be redeemed:

I know you once chased butterflies
and tried to learn what
hummingbird wings are made of
Where did you bury your dreams ?
Give me your hands and calm your heart

And at times she tries to essentially reason with them:

Stop following my footsteps
like a rabid animal
Stop sniffing the paths that lead to our home
like a dog on the hunt
We are not rabbits
not iguanas
not deer
We are your mirror
See yourself in us and
know we are not your enemy

In other places, the rage at these men who "wreck and scatter everything" shines through brightly -- as also with the reminder:

Words and memory have more power than your weapons
We are the ancient tree that holds all history
in its every branch
Your green is a disguise telling lies
Perhaps you think we're nearsighted ?
Even if we were blind
we will still hear the distant sound
of your body crawling
belly to earth like some worm
We know you will arrive like a snake
spitting your venom
vomiting fire
even after you incinerate our bodies
the rocks will burn with our memory's light

She also reminds of those who do not act or reäct but rather turn essentially a blind eye to the wrongdoing:

No wound hurts
like the silence
of those watching our flesh lanced open
listening resigned to the crunch of bones
and show their concern
by mopping up spilled blood
so it won't dirty the dawn

These are powerful, compact poems that resonate particularly strongly in the United States in early 2026 -- but sadly also in far too many other places. The collection is well-presented, from Call's useful Introduction (and brief Notes) to the black-and-white photographs that help relate the poems to their origins (even as, as noted, so much in them extends far beyond this geography and history) -- and the trilingual presentation of the poems is, of course, particularly admirable.

- M.A.Orthofer, 16 January 2026

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Links:

Stolen Flower:

Yale University Press publicity page
Pluralia Ediciones publicity page
Les Éditions de la crypte publicity page
Q & A with Irma Pineda and translator Wendy Call

Reviews:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Latin- and South American literature
See Index of Poetry
See Index of Bilingual and Trilingual editions under review
Other books from Yale University Press - The Margellos World Republic of Letters under review

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About the Author:

Irma Pineda is an Isthmus Zapotec author.

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