La Historia de los Colores / The Story Of Colors: A Bilingual Folktale From The Jungles Of Chiapas

Were it not for the fame showered upon this title in the wake of the NEA's retraction of funding for it, this Mexican folktale by a Zapatista leader would probably have attracted little attention: its greatest merit, Dom nguez's vibrantly original art, is subverted by a badly flawed design. The bilingual text is digressive and rough, as if transcribed from an oral telling, and it presumes some common ground that will likely be absent for American readers (""The gods were fighting.... They were very quarrelsome, these gods, not like the first ones, the seven gods who gave birth to the world, the very first ones""). Purporting to tell how the gods created colors, the story tacks on a message about tolerance, equating different colors with different ways of thinking. The art, meanwhile, is full of life, a heady mix of folkloric motifs and a contemporary intensity. Dom nguez's totemic figures crowd her canvases as if they were performing in a theater, their gestures and poses dramatic and commanding; and her fittingly colorful backgrounds are boldly and kinetically patterned. But the glossy paper flattens the rich, textured surfaces of the paintings; the three-quarter-page reproductions compete with different-colored blocks of text for readers' attention; and an unvaried, static layout discourages close perusal. Readers interested in the controversies surrounding the title will soak up the political commentary on the jacket flaps, which also include a photo of the guerrilla author--a masked figure garlanded with bandoliers of bullets. All ages. (May)