Maya Apocalypse: Seventeen Years With The Women Of A Yucatan Village

Book Summary

Maya Apolcalypse is the record of fieldwork that, as often happens, endedup quite differently from the way it was originally planned. In conducting aresearch project about speaking in tongues (glossolalia), Felicitas Goodman recordedthis non-ordinary behavior among English- and Spanish-speaking members ofPentecostal congregations. A Mexican Apostolic Pentecostoal minister introducedGoodman to the preacher in a Maya village in Yucatan. The congregation she came toknow in 1969 experienced a 'crisis cult' in response to a prediction of the end ofthe world, which was to take place on September 1, 1970. Goodman subsequently spenta part of every year until 1986 with the women of the congregation. Maya Apocalypseis a record of that fieldwork, which eventually covered not only the events in thetemple, both ordinary and extraordinary, but also the lives of the women who actedas informants, especially Do?a Eus, to whom this work is affectionatelydedicated.

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