Bringing The Yucatan To Life

Long Grove resident and mother of two Rosy Hugener is more than meets the eye. Not only does she volunteer at both and , she plays a mean game of tennis, makes an unforgettable guacamole and has recently become a published author.

Her book Xtabentum, pronounced Shta-ben-TOOM, was published in 2010. Rosy actually wrote what was is now the first chapter of this book as a short story for an English class she took at DePaul University when she came to America several years ago. Her professor really liked the story.

So, after a few years focusing on raising her two kids, she decided to expand on her short story and interweave real events from the life of her grandmother and other ancestors with things that happened in Merida in the early 1900s, just after the Mexican Revolution.

Rosy said, “My mother died when I was born, and I was raised by my grandmother; she was like my mom. My grandmother was from Merida, Yucatan, and she always told me fascinating stories about her life and that part of Mexico. As I grew up, my grandmother had me reading everything from classics like Don Quixote to romance novels bought on the street. My father preferred writers in English, so I had my share of that as well.” 

As a child, Rosy was interested in writing. She shares, “I grew up in a family that would interrupt a dinner conversation to recite a famous poem. And many of my relatives on my father’s side were writers, including my great grandfather, who was a journalist and founder of a Mexico City newspaper, and his father, whose history of Yucatan won a medal at 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.”

English is Rosy’s second language, so she says there was a lot of work getting the book into acceptable English form. Thankfully, her husband, Carl, was able to lend a hand in that. Rosy explains, “After my five years working on the book, he spent another six months on a rewrite. This was challenging because we wanted to preserve my voice as the voice of the narrator. Many people who know me have commented that it sounds like me, so I guess we were successful in this. But some people who don’t know me have commented that there are some grammatical problems. At least some of this is by design; we wanted it to sound like something someone from Mexico would say.”

Xtabentum has now sold 500 copies. This has been enough to place Xtabentum on Amazon’s list of the top 100 books in Latin American fiction.

“Now I am focusing on book clubs," she said. "A number of people who know me have hosted book clubs featuring my book, and it is great fun to talk about what is truth and what is fiction in the characters modeled on members of my family. Somehow this always involves tears at some point.”

Rosy’s book is available online or at Barnes and Noble. Give it a read and support a local author!

As always, email me with any news, topics or ideas that you want to read about. Remember, I’d like to be the first to know! I can be reached at laurenbgpatch@aol.com.