Fiction/ Historical Fiction

Edgell, Zee. Beka Lamb. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1982. The first internationally recognized Belizean novel, this story of a girl named Beka who is growing up with her country is required reading for all Belizean high schoolers and offers an excellent view of Belizean family life, history, and politics.

Highwater, Jamake. Journey to the Sky: A Novel About the True Adventures of Two Men in Search of the Lost Maya Kingdom. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978.

Lukowiak, Ken. Marijuana Time. Orion, 2000. Follow the author’s experiences on a six-month “hardship posting” to Belize in 1983 with the British military: “The long days are palliated by a constant and increasingly compulsive supply of drugs and japes, until he starts using his position in the army post-room to send improbably large bundles of the stuff home—to his army flat in Aldershot.”

Miller, Carlos Ledson. Belize: A Novel. Xlibris.com: 1999. This history-laden piece of fiction offers an impressively thorough snapshot of Belize over the last 40 years.

Westlake, Donald. High Adventure. Tor Books, 1986. Another marijuana smuggling action thriller: “You are in the jungles of Belize. You pick your way carefully along the overgrown trail until you come to the clearing. There, above you, rest the ruins of a Mayan pyramid. Is that a stone whistle at your feet? An idol of the bat-god? Riches surround you and Kirby Galway will be more to happy to smuggle your finds to the United States in a bale of marijuana. Aren’t you glad you met Kirby?”

Health and Practical

Arvigo, Rosita. Sastun: One Woman’s Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer and Their Efforts to Save the Vani. San Francisco: Harper, 1995. One of the better-known books about Belize, which tells the story of the American-born author’s training with 87-year-old Elijoio Panti, the best-known Maya medicine man in Central America. It takes place in the remote, roadless expanse of Cayo District in western Belize.

Schroeder, Dirk. Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Travel Publishing, 2000. An excellent resource that fits in your pocket for easy reference.

Sluder, Lan. Moon Living Abroad in Belize. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Travel Publishing, 2005. The Moon Living Abroad series helps readers realize their dream of making a home in a foreign country; each Living Abroad title provides the tools necessary to find—and settle into—a new home.

Werner, David. Where There Is No Doctor. Palo Alto, CA: Hesperian Foundation, 1992.

Zepatos, Thalia. A Journey of One’s Own. Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain Press, 2003. Offers “uncommon advice for the independent woman traveler.”

Nature and Field Guides

Being one of the most exhaustively studied tropical countries in the world, there are innumerable references that span every conceivable niche of flora, fauna, and geology. They come in massive, coffee table sizes with color plates, as well as in pocket-size field guides: Tarantulas of Belize, Hummingbirds of Belize, Orchids of Belize, and so on. Following are a few titles that make up the tip of the iceberg for this category:

Arvigo, Rosita, and Michael Balick (foreword by Mickey Hart). Rainforest Remedies: 100 Healing Herbs of Belize. Wisconsin: Lotus Press, 1998.

Beletsky, Les. Belize and Northern Guatemala: The Ecotravellers’ Wildlife Guide. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1999. One of the best, reasonably sized general nature guides to the area, with abundant color plates for all types of fauna.

Burgess, Robert. Secret Languages of the Sea. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1981. Burgess looks at the world of submarine communication.

Cousteau, Jacques-Yves. Three Adventures: Galapagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973.

Jones, H. Lee, and Dana Gardener (Illustrator). Birds of Belize. Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd, 2004. This is the long-awaited, much-acclaimed Bible of Belize birding (say that three times fast); it’s a big book (445 pp., 56 color plates, 28 figures, 234 maps) prompting some birders I met to cut out all the plates and only travel with those.

Kuhlmann, Dietrick. Living Coral Reefs of the World. New York: Arco Publishing, 1985.

MacKinnon, Barbara. 100 Common Birds of the Yucatán Peninsula. Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico: Amigos de Sian Ka’an, 1989.

Stevens, Katie. Jungle Walk: Birds and Beasts of Belize, Central America. Belize: Angelus Press, 1991. Order through International Expeditions, tel. 800/633-4734.

Archaeology

Carrasco, David. Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers. San Francisco: Waveland Press, 1998. Carrasco details the dynamics of two important cultures—the Aztec and the Maya—and discusses the impact of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of native traditions.

Coe, Michael D. The Maya, Seventh Edition. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005. A classic book, newly updated for anyone attempting to understand the Maya, the “most intellectually sophisticated and aesthetically refined pre-Columbian culture.”

De Landa, Friar Diego. Yucatán: Before and After the Conquest. New York: Dover Publications, 1978 (translation of original manuscript written in 1566). The same man who provided some of the best, most lasting descriptions of ancient Maya also single-handedly destroyed the most Maya artifacts and writings of anyone in history.

Schele, Linda, and David Freidel. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990.

Stephens, John L. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969 (originally Harper & Bros., New York, 1841). A classic 19th-century travelogue, Stephens’ writing is wonderfully pompous, amusing, and incredibly astute—with historical and archaeological observations that still stand today. If you can, find a copy with the original set of illustrations by Stephens’ expedition partner.

History, Politics, Tourism

Bolland, O. Nigel. Belize: A New Nation in Central America. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986. This book is one of many socio-political analyses by this prolific author.

Duffy, Rosaleen. A Trip Too Far: Ecotourism, Politics and Exploitation. Earthscan, 2002. A critical look of the impacts of ecotourism, using Belize as a case study.

Fairweather, Stephen. The Baymen of Belize. London, 1992. May be out of print.

Kerns, Virginia. Women and the Ancestors: Black Carib Kinship and Ritual. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Pattullo, Polly. Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean, Second Edition. London: Latin America Bureau, 2005. Pattullo provides an interesting breakdown of how the Caribbean tourism industry is structured, as well as a hard-hitting commentary on who benefits and howproviding numerous examples from Belize.

Rabinowitz, Alan. Jaguar: One Man’s Struggle to Establish the World’s First Jaguar Preserve. Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2000 (originally 1986). If you’ve only got time to read one book on Belize, I recommend this excellent “eco-memoir.” In addition to telling the true story of his jaguar work in Belize, Rabinowitz gives an alluring glance at Belize’s wild post-Independence, pre-tourism phase.

Roessingh, Carel. Entrepreneurs in Tourism in the Caribbean Basin: Case Studies from Belize, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Suriname. Whitston Publishing Company, 2006.

Sawatzky, Harry. They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico. With an Appendix on Mennonite Colonization in British Honduras. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1971.

Shoman, Assad. 13 Chapters of a History of Belize. Belize City: The Angelus Press, Ltd, 1994. A no-nonsense history of Belize from a fresh, Belizean perspective.

Sutherland, Anne. The Making of Belize: Globalization in the Margins London: Bergin & Garvey Paperback, 1998. The British Bulletin of Publications calls this “an enjoyable mixture of academic research, anecdotal insights and strong, even controversial opinion.… This book deserves to be read by any visitor to Belize, whether arriving as a tourist or as a volunteer with one of the many international conservation organizations now operating there.”

Wilk, Richard. Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Uses food to describe Belize’s longtime struggle within “the great paradox of globalization.” Wilk raises questions like “how can you stay local and relish your own home cooking, while tasting the delights of the global marketplace?” Includes menus, recipes, and “bad colonial poetry.”

© Joshua Berman and Avalon Travel from Moon Belize, 7th Edition