13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance: Trece colores de la resistencia hondureña (Letras) Tapa blanda - 2016

Melissa Cardoza is a writer and feminist artist born in Honduras amidst the sexual rebelliousness of the 60's. She is of mixed Afro-descendent Garfuna and indigenous Lenca heritage, and describes herself as a "GarLenca... in resistance to parties, husbands and states, a traveling and curious woman." Her mother died when she was very young and she grew up in a household of four men. She joined the feminist movement in her 20's while in college in Honduras in response to the killing of a young woman, a university student brutally murdered by two Honduran soldiers. She was attracted to the feminist movement for its rebelliousness, its creativity, its expressiveness, its independence. She left Honduras and lived in Mexico for two years where she joined a collective of other feminists and lesbians and wrote extensively. She came back, encountering a country in the throes of neoliberal economic reforms and burgeoning resistance against the wave of privatization and austerity that was sweeping not just Honduras but the rest of Latin America.

Though the feminist movement has always been her political home, she is also deeply immersed in the indigenous movement, largely because of her close friendship with Berta Cceres, one of the principal leaders of the Lenca indigenous organization COPINH. In the aftermath of the coup d'tat and through the process of resistance against it she has been impacted by the diversity of forces and peoples in the streets, where she has been both documentarian and participant. She describes the vocation of the writer as someone always "hunting stories in the reality around us." Her other work includes poetry, articles, short stories, essays and children's books. Previously, her mostly widely circulated publication was the children's book Tengo una ta que no es monjita, or "I have an aunt who is not a nun," published in Mexico with illustrator Margarita Sada. It is well known and widely praised for its artful, playful and powerful message of tolerance to children. 13 Colores de la Resistencia Hondurea, or 13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance, has brought her renewed attention throughout Latin America since its publication two years ago in Costa Rica and Honduras.