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Maya Apocalypse

Seventeen Years with the Women of a Yucatan Village

By: Felicitas D. Goodman

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Paperback | 22 September 2001

At a Glance

Paperback
576 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 15.6

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$72.75

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Maya Apocalypse is the record of a fieldwork experience which, as happens so often, ended up quite differently from the way it was originally planned. Felicitas Goodman was conducting in a research project about speaking in tongues (glossolalia). After recording this non-ordinary speech behaviour among English and Spanish speaking members of Pentecostal congregations, she sought to discover whether speaking a so-called "exotic," i.e. non-Indo-European language would in some way change certain basic linguistic patterns. A Mexican Apostolic Pentecostal minister kindly recommended the preacher in a Maya village in Yucatan (Mexico). The congregation she came to know in 1969 subsequently experienced a "crisis cult" in response to a prediction of the end of the world, which was to take place on September 1, 1970. Goodman subsequently spent a part of every year until 1986 with the women of the congregation. Maya Apocalypse is a record of that fieldwork, which eventually covered not only the events in the temple, both ordinary and extraordinary, but also the lives of the women who acted as informants, especially Dona Eus, to whom this work is affectionately dedicated.

Industry Reviews

"Anthropologist Goodman (Denison Univ.) is best known for her widely read books on trance, possession, ecstasy and altered states of consciousness (e.g. Where the Spirits Ride the Wind, CH, Feb'91; How About Demons?, 1988). Decades ago she was among the only serious students of glossolalia, or speaking-in-tongues. None had studied the phenomenon among speakers of exotic languages when in 1969 Goodman began observing a Maya Pentecostal group in Yucatan. Here Goodman publishes field diaries documenting in rich and moving detail her almost two decades of contact with that small but active congregation. Goodman seems to have edited out the roughness of field writings so that the text is highly readable. The resulting work provides an exceedingly rare window on the tumultuous life history of a sect among whom trances and visions are commonplace, and who at one juncture tensely awaited the imminent second coming of Christ (hence the book's title). On a more personal level, the author intends her book as a chronicle of her deep and developing relationships with Maya village women, thus contributing to the still growing genre of reflexive writings by women anthropologists. This is a very stimulating, valuable, and unique book for all levels/collections." -P. R. Sullivan, independent scholar, 2002may CHOICE

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